Awkward Stage
by xXSummerXx
Summary: what would happen if, after Erik died, his spirit got transported to another body? what if the origional owner of the body was still alive inside it? what if the origional owner of the body was a fourteen year old girl from our time? not a mary-sue!
1. Chapter 1

**Description: what would happen if Erik's spirit got transported to another body after he died? What if the original owner of the body** **was still alive inside it? What if the original owner** **of the body was a fourteen year old girl from our time? Read and find out. Not a Mary-Sue!**

**Author's note: Hi everyone! First of all, this is my first fic** **so please forgive me for all grammar mistakes, holes in the plot, run on sentences and any other annoying things that might pop up in this story. I'm also a procrastinator so there will be long periods of time with no updating-ness. If I don't update in over a month just send in some sort of review or e-mail telling me that it's been five hundred years since the last chapter and I need to get** **my butt over to the computer and do some writing.**

**Special thanks to anyone who reviews this or people that can't send reviews because they don't have accounts but still read it loyally. Except flames. If you hate this story enough to flame it just don't read it. Please.**

**Oh yeah, and if a character speaks or thinks in italics, it means it's the spirit living in their body rather than the body's original owner. I know, sounds creepy right? It's not. Only a little bit.**

**Disclaimer: I don't own anything fan fiction authors normally don't own.**

**And now, I give you...**

It happened on a more or less normal day. Well, not exactly normal, the heat in my home town of Detroit was sky rocketing. A bunch of people think that since Michigan borders the lake, it's always cooler there than every where else. Believe me, its not, not where I live. Not the day it happened.

I was with Sandy. Good old Sandy. She and I were, like, instant best friends when we met at age eight. We had been inseparable for the last five, no, six years. There had even been a few rumors the previous year that we were lesbians and dating. And a couple that I was secretly a guy and hitting on her which, for your information, I am not. Sometimes it was a little bit hard being friends with her because she was so popular and I was so...not. The worst part was when she tried to get me to hang out with her popular friends because she thought we would hit it off, like she was that day. Don't get me wrong, they're perfectly nice people, not like the preps and valley-girls you see on TV, we just have really different personalities.

We-by that I mean Sandy, her friend Lola, and I-were taking advantage of the fact that Sandy's house was air-conditioned and watching TV in her living room. I think it was Dr. Phil. Doesn't matter, I wasn't watching anyway. I was kind of spacing out, that is until my attention was grabbed by a cold tremor shaking my body. It's a really weird feeling having a spirit that's not your own enter your body, it was as if an icy-cold hand had reached inside me and ran its fingers slowly down my spine. Creepy huh?

I shivered and grabbed the blanket that was lying next to me one the couch, throwing it around my shoulders. As you can imagine, that earned me two awkward stares seeing as it was ninety-nine degrees outside.

Suddenly, my hand flew to my face. Only I hadn't told it to. My arm had just moved without any meaning or purpose, without my even knowing why. And then, this thought lurched into my head. But it wasn't my thought, it was as if someone else had thought it but it had popped into my head. The thought was this: _why wasn't I wearing my mask?_ And then I got another thought, this one my own: why was I wondering why wasn't wearing a mask?

But this other thought, the one that wasn't mine, got so desperately over-powering that I blurted out "_Where is it?"_ And then the real, non-possessed, me blurted "why did I say that?"

For those of you who haven't guessed this, not being the only spirit in your own body can be unbelievably confusing. I was at a loss, and even us nerds, who embarrass ourselves on a daily basis, don't enjoy being humiliated so I came up with an excuse to get out of any normal human beings' presence. I managed to cough out "uh, I gotta get home, Sandy. My mom always thinks something bad happened to me if I'm out for more than two hours. Thanks," between quiet sulks that weren't mine about my mask and some opera house and other things that didn't make sense.

She frowned in confusion. She had a right to be, I usually act insane but not _that_ insane, even when I'm high. "But it's only been an hour and a half" she pointed out.

"Right. Well, I better go, just to be safe. _How on earth did I get here?_ Just pretend I didn't say that last part okay?"

"Okay. Bye, Berly." she mumbled, obviously still confused.

I stumbled out the door, still muttering against my will and started to walk home. "Okay, that didn't just happen," I reassured myself, "I am perfectly sane, I do not wear a mask regularly, and I know nothing about operas!"

at the same time, my, uh, other self, the one that had been wondering about the mask was getting frustrated with me. "_Obviously, your thoughts are not the only ones filling this head. At the same time, you_ _do wear a mask regularly, you are an expert on operas and you are not sane at all"_ it told me.

I realized that I was talking to myself and lowered my voice to a whisper. I gave up, I believed the voice in my head and managed to convince myself that there _was_ another person's thoughts in my head. It was easier than trying not to believe it. "Alright then. Who are you and what are you doing in my brain?" I said to thin air.

"_My name is Erik. I am more commonly known as the Opera Ghost or the Phantom of the Opera"_ he said back. My head swam, I almost swooned. I had the Phantom of the freaking Opera talking to me in my head! "_As for why my thoughts are in your head I can only guess,_" he went on, "_the last thing I remember was dying. It could well be that my spirit or ghost has entered your body. Or yours has entered mine_."

'Well that's not weird at all' I thought sarcastically, 'I get fictional characters talking to me in my head every week.'

'_Fictional'_ he thought back.

'Well normally, when you see a movie about something as likely to be true as Sandy being the devil, you assume it's fiction.'

'_And who is Sandy?'_

'The girl that was in that house back there. The blonde.'

'_I see. Well whatever you believe, I am , or was, very real.'_

'Either that or I'm completely insane'

"_I've told you who I am. Now who are _you?" he asked me out loud, ignoring my observation.

"Well, I'm a fourteen-year-old girl living in America," at this point I could feel his disappointment and frustration that I was a girl and a child, I didn't blame him. I almost cracked a smile as I tried to imagine Erik dealing with my problems: cramps, pimples, periods and other horrors caused by puberty. Since he could see my thoughts, he knew this, his frustration deepened.

"_The girl in the other house, Sandy, called you by Berly." _

"It's short for Beverly. Beverly Redmond." I, no, _we_ walked in the door of my house. It wasn't even my legs doing the walking anymore, they were _our legs_. I stumbled into my room feeling a little bit sick.

"_Voice type?_"

"Alto."

"_Can you play music?"_

"Just the piano." I glanced at the piano sitting in the next room.

"_And what do we look like?"_ he asked as I stumbled us into my room. Our room now, I guessed.

In answer to his question, I turned to face the mirror I had hanging on the wall above my dresser. I waited as he took in my, wait, _our_ relatively long legs, our tangled brown hair, and our curves (which I was not proud of in any way, in fact, I had been anorexic for a few months a couple years back, it was my little sister, May that talked me out of it).

I noticed how he made a point of avoiding looking at our face. I figured it was a habit. I still had some control of where my eyes looked though, I looked directly at the reflection of our face in the mirror. Couldn't hurt. Grey eyes, kind of big nose, lots of freckles. I was no beauty, that was for sure, but I wasn't terribly ugly either. We didn't smile but I knew he was glad.

He looked at the tank-top and short shorts we were wearing with disapproval. '_Are these the sort of things all females wear here?_' he asked through thoughts.

'Yes, actually' I thought back.

'_I refuse to wear cloths such as these in or out of public'_

'Alright then. What will you wear?' I decided to try and be flexible with the situation, which was not something I normally did. I'm usually a stubborn little prick. Or so my sixth grade history teacher liked to call me.

It took an hour of digging through my closet for Erik to find something that he found tolerable. He had it laid out on my bed and was thinking that perhaps it really wasn't suitable and he should probably look farther through my things for something better. It was an outfit of indescribable nerdy-ness. My mom had picked it out for me the year before because it had been on sale. It had never been worn.

"I am not wearing that" I said out loud. Along with hearing/seeing his thoughts, apparently I could feel his emotions too, he was surprised that I had refused him. Apparently very few people did that. I was pretty surprised my self, I'm not usually the assertive type. I'm usually the type that sits quietly in the corner, wishing they were the assertive type.

Since he could feel my emotions and thoughts as well as I could feel his, he knew that. _"I'm curious. What gives you the courage to refuse somebody such as me knowing that it will most likely end regretfully for you?" _he asked coldly.

We were whispering for the simple reason that we didn't want people to think that we were a freak who talks to herself. We didn't have to owing to the fact that we were home alone, but it was probably a good idea to get into the habit of not letting people catch us in a conversation (or argument). Just to be safe.

"You can't do anything to me. We're one and the same now; whatever you do to me, you do to yourself too." I was proud of myself, I usually never caught on to things like that.

I could feel his frustration. He knew I was right.

**So there it is, chapter one. Hope you all liked it. I know, it's not the best but I promise it'll get better as it goes on. Reviews make me feel special. NO FLAMES PLEASE, PLEASE!! **


	2. Of Theatre Camp and Violent Hugs

**Hi!!**

**First of all, thank you to Broadway Geek, Evony Shadow and Sarahriah for reviewing. You guys are awesome!**

**Second of all, I go out of town a lot in the summer so there are going to be some long periods of time with no updating-ness.** **It's gonna be even worse when school starts for me because I'm a procrastinator so I'll have to be spending a lot of time on stuff that I've left to the last minute. SORRY!!**

**Disclaimer:** **I don't own Phantom of the Opera. Nor do I own its characters, plot, settings or anything else that I don't own.**

When I woke up the next morning, I was incredibly depressed and I didn't know why. That was weird, usually I knew why I was depressed.

I glanced over at the clock. 8:30. Theater camp started in an hour. It was basically a group of about twenty to thirty drama nerds gathered in one place and putting on a production. I wasn't embarrassed to be seen going there really because I had been classified as a nerd by every one I knew years ago. Some people considered it a good thing. Others didn't.

My mom walked into my room holding something behind her back with an odd expression on her face. "Beverly," she said slowly, "what's this?" she showed me the thing she had been holding. It was a long rope. Tied into the shape of a Punjab lasso.

'Yes Erik, what is it?' I thought irritably.

'_What does it look like?'_ he thought, even more irritably.

"I was just bored, Mom. I found the rope in the garage. Go ahead and untie it if you want." I lied. She walked away looking confused.

"Did you do that?" I whispered when she was gone.

"_No. The cat did_." he was good at sarcasm. I didn't even have a cat.

"Seriously, when did you make that? Why don't I remember it?"

"_You were asleep."_

I could hear my nine year old sister, May in the next room so I converted our conversation to thoughts. 'Great. So you can go around doing things while I'm asleep that I have no say in. One day I'm going to wake up at midnight in the middle of May's room with her crying and asking me why I'm putting the rope around her neck.'

'_I wouldn't be so indecent as to kill a child_'

'I'm glad.'

Now that I thought about it, I remembered dreaming about finding a rope somewhere and tying it into the shape of a lasso. I also remembered nightmares. Several nightmares. About darkness and a cage, people laughing loudly and a guy with a whip.

'Never had nightmares like those before. Where did they come from?' I thought to Erik, 'what were they?' I wasn't expecting him to answer

'_My childhood_' he thought briefly. Well, now I knew why I woke up depressed.

'Wow. I think somebody needs a hug' I thought and put our arms around us.

Little thoughts of annoyance flitted through his mind and he dropped our arms.

'Fine, I need a hug.' I put our arms back in the hug they had been in before.

"BERLY!!" May screeched from the next room, cutting off my conversation with my fictional other self. She and Sandy were really the only ones who ever called me Berly.

"I'm right here May you don't have to shout." I called.

"Berly, you have to get dressed so we can go to camp!" she replied. Nine years old and she was already obsessed with punctuality, she probably got it from my mom.

May and I both went to the same theater camp. She was the youngest possible age they accepted and I was the oldest so this would be my last year there.

'_I refuse to wear anything_ _even remotely similar to what you have on now' _Erik warned mentally.

I had slept in my cloths from yesterday. I had been too exhausted from discovering that I had the spirit of a fictional character inhabiting my body to change before bed.

'You don't have to. I have theater camp and we have to arrive in costume' I replied. My camp was performing a collection of songs from different Broadway shows and my role was incredibly important. I held up the applause sign. My costume was just a brightly colored T-shirt and a poofy skirt with leggings underneath.

I picked it up off the floor where it had been sitting in a wrinkled heap and laid out on my bed. I stared at it for a few seconds before putting it on. I was afraid to change with Erik there. What if I subconsciously looked down at myself?

Everyone's favorite Phantom considered this also. '_Close your eyes_' was his solution.

For those of you who've never changed your cloths with your eyes closed, don't ever try it. It really is a lot harder than it would seem. By the time we stepped out of our room in our costume we had about fifteen bruises in various places that hadn't been there twenty minutes before (although it could have been due partly to the fact that I am the biggest klutz in history). May was waiting for us with her arms folded and her foot tapping. She was a chorus member in the songs from Wicked, A Chorus Line, and The Lion King. Her costume was a tiny, pink leotard with red leggings and a yellow tutu. She looked adorable but she hated it when I told her that.

"We have to go now," she pouted, "you took the longest time ever to get dressed and now we're gonna be late."

I grabbed a granola bar to eat while we walked there. It wasn't much of a breakfast but in my opinion, I needed to slim up.

"You better eat that whole thing' she ordered.

"Demanding today aren't we?" I said to her. Erik wanted to give her a death glare but I tried not to let him. I had a feeling that his death glare could have made grown men cry.

"Well, I don't want you to get sick again!" she was referring to when I had been anorexic for about five months two years ago.

"C'mon, May" I said as I pulled the front door open and stepped out.

The camp was about three and a half blocks away so May and I (and Erik too, I guess) got there in about twenty five minutes. We saw Lola on our way in and she nodded her head at us. I know I said that it was really only nerds that went to my theater camp but Sandy and Lola went there too. Sandy went because she loved to sing and Lola went because she loved to hear her sing.

Lola walked up to one of the choreographers (they were all really college students who were doing this as a summer job) and said "Sandy can't be here today. She wasn't feeling well."

"What? Why? But she has a solo!" the choreographer said, looking up from her magazine.

"She just said she wasn't feeling well" Lola said before giving her an apologetic look and walking away.

Sandy was supposed to sing the Wizard and I from Wicked. She really was the only one with a strong enough voice for the hard notes in that song.

"Crap. I told Cliff we should have gotten understudies" the choreographer said. She was sort of panicky.

"I'll sing Sandy's song." Darn it! That was the second time I'd said something without meaning to in two days and this time Erik hadn't even made me.

"Will you, Beverly? Thanks so much! We don't really need anyone to fill in for you, your part's not important. There's an extra costume for her song in the back. Go see if it fits you" she commanded me.

I unhappily stalked off to the corner of the room that was supposed to serve as the backstage area. My voice wasn't nearly strong enough for this song! But I couldn't back out now, Erik had apparently decided he wasn't going to let me.

'But I can't sing' I thought. I was fully prepared to beg with him if he was going to be stubborn.

'_But I can_'

I gaped. Was he insane? Well, yes he probably was, actually.

'But, but... you don't know the song' I sputtered mentally.

'_I have axis to anything in your memory that I may want_' he informed me. That made me a little bit uncomfortable. I'd had a lot of embarrassing moments that I still remembered all to vividly.

'okay then' I said slowly. He picked up the Elphaba costume and I headed towards the bathrooms so we could change into it. I was a little undecided as to which bathroom I should go into. I guessed it would be worse to go into the boys' bathroom than the girls'. Erik agreed (a little reluctantly) so we walked into the one with the female sign on the door. Great, I got to change with my eyes closed again.

half an hour later, it was our turn to go on stage. I was nervous, which I told Erik through thought about thirty times. I really hated having people stare at me. He did too, no doubt, but there was no way he was going to tell me that.

I took a deep breath. this song really wasn't made for an alto (nothing was ever made for an alto) but it would be okay. I stepped out on stage and walked up to the microphone in the front. Erik silently wondered what it was and why it was there. I explained briefly.

I took another deep breath and started playing the song in my head and he began to sing. I could tell it was weird for him to hear the words he was singing come out in a girl's voice and it was weird for me to not be the one singing but to have the words come out in my voice. We were both feeling awkward but he, of course, didn't show a trace of either of our insecurity so I gave him control of our body.

The song actually ended before I knew it. The small audience of parents and kids who had nothing better to do burst into applause. I didn't blame them, Erik could sing dang well. I had only seen the movie once because it scared May but that was enough to know that he was a freaking amazing singer. And yet I was still surprised. He sang in a way that no actor could imitate (not even Gerard Butler). He put so much passion into the song and years later I could still remember every word of that song the way he sang it in vivid detail.

My friends Nora and Sam were in the audience. They were my nerd buddies, the people I spent my time with when Sandy wasn't determinedly trying to make me popular. They were both great, they accepted the fact that I was a dork and liked it. We were all dorks really. The cool thing was that we were all nerds, but different types of nerds. Sam was the books nerd. I used to think that it wasn't possible to have hair the exact same color as sand but he did: a sort of dark yellow-mixed with brown with tiny flecks of black that you could only see if you looked really hard. I was the show tunes and drama nerd. Nora with her long hair the color of ebony was... well I don't know. Nora was just a nerd. She didn't really have anything about her that made her a dork, and she was pretty. Real pretty. She probably could have been really popular if she hung out with different people.

I was smiling broadly. I was really pleased with myself which, I suppose, wasn't really fair considering the fact that I had really done nothing. I was still happy though, that is until I saw him. He was standing about six yards from Nora and Sam, it was his hair that caught my eye. He had lovely hair wavering between platinum blond and gold. My jaw dropped. He was really hot.

Erik (obviously) noticed him too. He turned on our heel and speed walked off stage (with out even taking a bow). I was grateful for that, I hadn't put any cover-up over my acne -although there wasn't much of it- that morning and I didn't want Mr. Perfect to me.

'was that Joe? Joe White? Oh my gosh, I think it was.' I thought hysterically. I had known Joe for quite a while but he'd changed a lot over the summer. He'd become gorgeous.

'_I wouldn't know wether it was Joe White or not_' Erik pointed out.

'He was giving me a weird look. I don't think he liked our singing' I fretted.

'_No, not at all_' he replied and I got the feeling he knew something that I didn't.

'Why were you surprised to see him,' I wondered, 'you practically ran off stage.'

'_Why were _you _surprised to see him?'_ he asked, avoiding answering my question.

'Because he's, like, the human embodiment of gorgeousness!' I know, don't judge a book by its cover and all but I already knew Joe. And you would not believe how good looking he'd gotten.

'_Ah, so only I can see my fellow spirit'_ he mused.

'What do you mean?'

'_He is also the human embodiment of Monsieur_ _Raoul_' he informed me matter-of-factly.

My jaw dropped for the second time five minutes. 'What?!' I had personally always been a bit of a phangirl and therefore had never liked Raoul (or his woman hair). 'so...Raoul's with Joe the you're with me?'

'_Yes_' you'd think that with his worst enemy in discussion, he would come up with a more complex answer. He didn't like Raoul being there either though, I could tell.

Just then, Nora and Sam ran up to us (the show was over by then). Nora gave us a hug. The phrase bear hug wouldn't be right to describe her hugs. They were the type of hugs that made you believe that your ribs would snap like plastic and that you would never breathe again. When she let us go, Sam said "you were great Beverly!"

"Thanks," I replied, "I had a lot of help."

He looked confused. "From who?"

"Uummm... I forget." I was officially the worst liar the world had ever seen.

"Okay then. So I noticed you saw that Joe was there. He came to see Sandy" he said warily, putting some stress on the word Sandy.

"Right. Yeah. Listen guys I have to go. Thanks for coming." I said and stumbled away as fast as I could.

I found my way over to a choreographer, the same one as before. She was still reading her magazine.

"My sister and I have to leave early. Can you sign us out?" I asked her while looking around to see where Joe/Raoul was. He was on the other side of the room, talking animatedly to Lola.

The choreographer nodded and picked up a sign-out sheet without taking her eyes off her article.

"Beverly and May Redmond" I told her and she looked up from the magazine long enough to find our names and check them off.

I found May and told her we had to leave while trying not to look at Joe.

"Why? Camp's not over." she asked me.

"I don't feel well" I explained briefly.

We walked out side and May ran ahead in the direction of home.

'So, Raoul's in Joe's body?' I thought to Erik.

'_You pronounce his name completely wrong_'

'I'm aware of that.' I was. It was more fun to say it like Raul than saying it the right way.

While I was concentrating on my internal conversation with Erik, I wasn't watching where I was going. I collided with someone and we both ended up on the ground. I rubbed my head and looked up to see who I had bumped into.

Joe. Of course.

We -Joe and I- both momentarily lost our control and Erik and Raoul Lunged at each other but Joe and I pulled away. I found it was easier to deal with Joe/Raoul right there if I balled our hands into fists and didn't look at them.

"Hi, Joe" I bit out. I would have been surprised if it was coherent because our teeth were clenched together.

"Hi" he said. Also through clenched teeth.

Suddenly, there was this exploding pain in the left side of our head and we were knocked to the ground again -we had just gotten up.

Joe was staring at his right hand with horror. It was still clenched into a fist. It took me a few seconds to realize that he had punched me. Or rather, Raoul had punched Erik.

This infuriated Erik of course and I had to get away from them as soon as possible to avoid a disaster.

"Well, I'd better get home before I... involuntarily strangle you" I stuttered, already trying to back away.

"Yeah, you'd better" Joe said distractedly. And I sprinted to catch up with May.

'That was awkward' I thought.

**Whew, that was a long one! I have to admit they won't all be that long, most of them will probably be pretty short. I'm not sure wether I'm basing this on the book or the movie but I'm leaning towards the movie. So it will be movie until I say otherwise. Thank you to all readers and reviewers. Once again, no flames please!**


	3. Of Overtures and Hermits

**Hello again!**

**Sarahriah, I've got the whole plot thought out pretty much but if I told you wether that would happen or not it would be spoiling! Thanks for the review.**

**This chapter is sort of pointless. I'm thinking I'm gonna add a lot of pointless chapters because I'm terrified that this fic will be over after like five chapters.**

**So here it is, chapter three:**

"MAY!" I immediately felt bad after screaming at her. I had just felt an insane erg to shout at the top of my lungs after my encounter with Joe and his lovely friend -I was trying to avoid thinking the name Raoul. It seemed to make Erik angry. Really angry.

We were trying to catch up to her after meeting Joe/Raoul. We had started out sprinting but we slowed to a jog when we caught site of her.

"What? I didn't do anything wrong. I didn't even go that far ahead" she pouted, her eyes filling with unshed tears.

"No you didn't do anything wrong, I'm sorry I yelled at you" I said between breaths when we caught up with her.

We walked in silence for a while before May said "Berly?"

"Yeah?"

"Why did Joe hit you?"

Erik was about to answer by saying something bad (really bad) about Raoul but I didn't think May needed to learn any French swear-words so I cut him off saying "He, um, was just pretending to hit me. I pretended to fall to make him feel bad."

Another silence.

"Berly?"

"Yeah?"

"Why are you acting so weird?" Great. She'd noticed already? My sister was creepy.

"_Because, child, I have the spirit of a fictional character inhabiting my body and he has made himself very determined to make my life miserable."_

'Erik!' if it's possible to think loudly, I made every effort to do so.

"Really?" May stared at us with her wide, innocent blue eyes.

"_Yes_"

'Stop that!' I thought hysterically.

'_She would have known if you were lying -you're a terrible liar- and besides, do you think she really believes us? And even if she does and she tells every single person she knows, do you think they would believe her?_' he thought calmly.

'I guess you right,' I thought after a pause, 'have you really made yourself determined to make my life miserable?' I was afraid of the answer.

'_I have yet to decide_' he replied emotionlessly.

'Great.'

There was another pause and then, out of nowhere, I thought 'Want to hear your theme song?'

Of course, his reply was '_what_?'

'Your theme song,' I explained, 'you know how I told you there was a movie made about you? Well it had songs.'

He didn't reply. He wasn't sure if he wanted to know what songs from this time period were like. So I decided for him and started digging around in the small backpack I had brought for my ipod. I went to the songs from Phantom but decided to only play the Overture. Songs with actual lyrics might bring up memories and I didn't want him to get depressed. It was partly because if he got depressed (more so than he was now) then I got depressed (more so than I was now).

When the song was over I thought 'So what'd you think?'

'_And what other things do people from this time period listen to?_' he seemed to have quite a habit of not answering questions.

I scrolled down until I found Pocketful of Sunshine by Natasha Bedingfield. 'This is what a lot of girls listen to. I don't know what guys listen to. I've never been one' I thought to him and played the song.

When the song was over I played a few more and explained what ipods were used for and that I didn't actually know how they worked. And then we were home. It felt so good to be in my room where I could be alone and didn't have to worry about people thinking I was insane. Erik and I could even talk to each other out loud if we kept our voice low.

"I think we need to lay low for a while, Erik," I whispered once the door was locked and I had flopped us down on my bed, "stay out of public."

"_Probably. It would be unwise to risk running in to Raoul again._" he replied a little too loudly and I mentally shushed him.

"Yeah that wouldn't be good. You're not going to try and kill him while I'm asleep are you?" I asked.

"_Perhaps_" he replied, a little more quietly this time.

"Please don't."

"_I'll refrain for the time being._"

"Thanks"

we sat in silence for a while. Then a thought occurred to me. I sat up abruptly and was about to ask Erik about it when he thought '_No, that would not go over well_.'

'I didn't even ask the question' I thought in frustration.

'_But I already knew what I was going to be. Therefore, waiting for you to actually ask would have been a waste of time._' he thought back, his tone cold and emotionless like always.

'Fine. So what would we do if it actually happens?' the question was going to be 'what if we run in to Christine?'

He didn't want to talk -or I guess he didn't want to think about it. He didn't actually say that of course but this awful wave of depression swept over me and I knew it couldn't be mine. I had nothing to be depressed about, really.

I groped around for a change of subject. 'So, um... we're gonna stay in this room and never come out unless someone drags us out. We'll become a hermit.'

He internally sighed. '_Living in complete solitude is more painful than an adolescent like you would understand. You wouldn't be able to handle it._'

'Can't be that bad, no one to drive you crazy. And I'm not adolescent. I'm fourteen.'

He didn't answer me but turned to the mirror and gave it a you-will-accept-that-you-are-adolescent-and-you-will-like-it look so that it reflected back at me.

'Okay. We won't be a hermit then'

**And that's chapter three! I know, nothing really happened but it will get a lot better in the next chapter I promise. That one might not be up for a while because some big stuff pops up in that one. So I'll see you guys later.**

**NO FLAMES PLEASE!!**


	4. Of Pop Tarts and Death Glares

**Hi!!**

**Once again, thanks to Sarahriah, Evony Shadow, and Broadway Geek for their fabulous reviews. You guys rock!!**

**Those three are my only reviewers. But this is my first fic so I would have been pleased just to get one reviewer. Who needs more** **than three? Plus no one's flamed me yet. Plus I've got a lot of hits. So I'm thinking I'm definitely going to continue with this. YAY!!**

**Sorry. I know it's been a little longer than usual since the last update. I was busy. Sorry again.**

**Any who, I know I said something big was gonna come up in this one but I don't think I'm gonna do that just yet. I'd forgotten I was going to put this chapter up so really something big will come up in the next chapter.**

**disclaimer: I don't own Phantom of the Opera. Nor do I own anything else that I don't own.** **I just realized that chapter three didn't have a disclaimer. I didn't own anything in chapter three either!**

It had been three weeks since we had run into Joe/Raoul. Three weeks of staying inside and speaking to no one other than May -and on occasion my parents. We weren't a hermit but we were closer to being one than anything else. All I had seen for weeks were the same four walls of my room and I figured that, if I wasn't already crazy, I would be soon.

Erik was right, I couldn't live alone for more than a month to save my life (although I still stubbornly refused to think of myself as an adolescent). I was never really alone though. All the same, I hadn't seen Sandy or Sam or Nora or any of my friends for almost a month now and I was beginning to miss people that weren't my family and didn't talk to me in my head. Sam and Nora had each tried to call me a few times but I hadn't heard from Sandy since that one fateful Saturday afternoon when my life had become the definition of, how could I put this? When my life had become the definition of awkwardness.

It just so happened that, on that particular morning, I was having trouble remembering what the world outside my room looked like so I did something brave. I stepped out into the hall.

'I have decided that I no longer want to be a hermit and desire human interaction,' I informed Erik, 'and also that I am hungry.'

He wouldn't have said I told you so. He wasn't that type of person. But sub-conscious thoughts of he-had-known-that-all-along-and-I-just-wouldn't-listen flitted through his mind.

I walked into the kitchen and opened up a cabinet. No more granola bars. They were all I had been eating lately owing to the fact that I had been trying to spend as little time outside my room as possible.

'Erik?' I thought.

'_Yes?_' still cold and un-feeling. I had begun to wonder if the movie was wrong and he never had any emotions at all. Of course I knew he had emotions though, I could feel them. Which meant I spent most of my time being depressed.

'Have you made a decision about wether or not you're going to make my life miserable yet?' I felt I had the right to know the answer.

'_I don't see any significance in doing so._'

'In making a decision?'

'_No_'

'In making my life miserable?'

'_Yes_'

'Oh. Well that's always a good thing.' I was personally of the opinion that life was better when one wasn't miserable.

I wrote granola bars on the grocery list -my handwriting really sucked from being out of practice- and grabbed a pop-tart. 'Now for the human interaction part.'

I went back to my room and searched around until I found my cell phone. Not that my room was a mess, Erik wouldn't have aloud that. If he did allow it, however, the room would resemble more of a black hole than anything else. I flipped my phone open and scrolled through my contact list, deciding who to call. The person I really wanted to talk to was Sandy, I hadn't seen her in the longest time...

Any way, I punched in her number and waited for three rings before she picked up. "Hi, Sandy. It's Berl-" I started to say but she randomly hung up. I listened to the dial tone for a couple seconds. Why had she done that? Maybe her phone died? No, that wasn't it, she charged her phone practically every day. It never died. I decided to walk to her house and talk to her instead of just calling someone else like a good little nerd would, much to Erik's annoyance. He hated being outside. I pretended not to understand why.

I didn't really have to explain to him about phones. We had spent over twenty-one days in my room, there wasn't much to do in there so I'd had plenty of time to explain the twenty-first century.

I pulled our hair out of the pony-tail I had been keeping it in so that it fell down over our face, (Erik was making me self-conscious) yanked the front door open and stepped out side. While we walked, I mulled over the past few weeks. Theater camp had ended two days after our meeting with Joe/Raoul. He had given us quite a bruise but it had faded and was almost gone now. I'd woken up depressed, like I had the first day, every morning because I'd had the dreams every night, although they were more like nightmares really. I'd also had dreams about what Erik did while I was asleep. He was awake twenty-four/seven, it appeared he didn't need sleep -or food or water or anything else that the average living thing needs. Although he wasn't a living thing anymore I guessed. We still changed with our eyes closed but I had gotten better at it and the number of bruises we got lessened every day.

When we got to Sandy's house we saw that Lola and some blonde girl were already there. They were standing in the doorway talking to Mrs. Hall -Sandy's mom. Just as we were walking up the front porch steps Lola and Blondie started to walk away.

"Looking for Sandy?" Lola asked upon noticing us. She appeared to be being friendly enough, so I nodded and tried not to let Erik give her the death glare which I had gotten in the mirror once. It was not a desirable experience.

"Her mom said she wasn't feeling well. That she didn't want to see anyone. Sorry" she told me apologetically.

"Still? I mean, is it the same thing that it was three weeks ago? When she couldn't come to camp?" I found it hard to believe. Sandy rarely got sick, she just so happened to be miss Popular McPerfect.

"I guess so. I really don't know what's going on with- oh! I'm sorry, did I do something wrong?" she winced. Erik had given her the death glare.

"No. Sorry. Thanks for your help." I muttered and started walking back in the direction of our house.

I was frustrated. And what was worse, I was tired of being frustrated. Why did Erik always have to be so negative? It made me negative. I was so tired of being upset.

'_The irritation and annoyance you feel is all your own. You are angered by the prospect of tomorrow and comfort yourself by denying it._' he told me in his thoughts.

He was right. I winced at the word tomorrow. Tomorrow was the most awful word I knew right now. Tomorrow was a swear word and I was doing my best not to even think it. Tomorrow, highschool started. I groaned out loud.

It was going to be bad enough being a nerdy freshman at a big school but now I had to have another reason for freshman year to be hard? I wasn't blaming Erik, I really wasn't, but...

I sighed. This was going to be an awkward year.

When we were home and safely back inside, I pulled our hair back into its pony-tail. I hated it getting in our eyes. Then again, seeing as I was contemplating the idea of my first day of highschool, there were few things I didn't hate.

"Berly!" May exclaimed when she saw us. She was sitting on the floor of the front room, coloring. As usual. "You're not hiding any more."

"I was never hiding, May." I told her as I attempted to dislodge the hair tie from the tangle it had become embedded in. I pulled a couple more times and managed to painfully rip it out.

"_Yes she was._" Erik told her. During our three weeks as a hermit, she had often come into my room and asked us about him -she completely believed us. He, for some reason, had told her everything she wanted to know. Except, of course, questions relating to a more touchy subject.

She frowned. "But wouldn't that mean you were hiding too, Erik?" she was getting good at being able to tell which one of us was speaking and when.

"_I suppose so_" he said dismissively and stalked back off in the direction of my room. I had decided to refer to it as my room rather that our room, just because he never felt at all at home there like I always did, it didn't feel like it belonged to him.

Before we got out of earshot of her I said, "May, you haven't told anyone about Erik right? Not even Mommy and Daddy?"

"No I didn't, 'cause you said I shouldn't, right?"

"Yeah."

"'cause if people know, then they'll want story book characters of their own and then they'll get mad at us 'cause we can't give them any. We don't know how. Right?"

"Yeah."

I grinned a little bit as we walked. 'It looks like you've taken a liking to May' I observed mentally.

'_So it would seem_' he replied.

'Why? I mean, I know she's adorable and sweet and all that other stuff, but... why?'

It was very rare that he had to think about how to phrase an answer to one of my questions but he did now. '_Because of her innocence. Because of the fact that she is too young to understand flaws and so goes on thinking the world is a happy and beautiful place, living in blissful ignorance._'

I didn't answer for a while, I didn't know what to say. I had never really thought about it that way. I threw a glance back at my sister, happily drawing her picture and decided on a response: 'that was deep.'

**And that's chapter four!! **

**Okay, so I've gotten a few reviews saying people want to know who Christine is gonna pop up as -although I thought people would have guessed already.** **So I already know who it's gonna be but I put a pole up on my profile page to see if people agree with me. Please vote.**

**Reviews make me happy. Flame me and I'll set Erik on you.**


	5. Of Emos And DeadWeight

**HI!!**

**Thanks again to Broadway Geek, Evony Shadow and Sarahriah for their awesome reviews! Guess what! I got two new reviewers: Phantom's Obsessor and Etcetera, both of whom are amazingly awesome! Three people voted also so I get to thank them again.**

**Speaking of reviews, I've got a lot of hits** **so I'm gonna enable anonymous reviews just to see if I get anymore of them that way. So if you don't have an account** **you can review now but, as** **personal favor, could you not hack onto my account or abuse me? Thanks.**

**Disclaimer: I own nothing. Erik doesn't own anything either.**

**Erik gives Summer death glare**

**AI!! Death glare! It buuuuuuuurrns!!**

**Well this one isn't going to be easy to write. Here goes...**

Riiiiinnngg! Alarm clock.

As soon as I woke up, I wished I hadn't. Highschool today. I figured I had about five hours left to live.

'Ever had a death wish, Erik?' I thought bitterly.

'_That is none of your concern_' he informed me.

'I think it's about to come true,' I went through the dreams I'd had last night, trying my best to skip over the usual nightmares. That was weird, I'd had dreams that I was asleep. 'Did you actually sleep last night?'

'_I didn't feel I had anything more worth while to do._'

'Cool'

it took about twenty minutes of arguing and raiding my closet for Erik and I to find something we could agree on. It was a green and black plaid skirt with a plain white polo shirt over it. I figured I was going to be classified under nerd by the second week of school anyway. I grabbed a sweatshirt too, it was starting to get colder outside.

I went into the kitchen and started to open a cabinet to grab a granola bar hoping that my mom had bought some yesterday. Seeing none I grabbed another Pop-tart.

"No. you need a good breakfast for your first day of school." I looked up to see my mom standing over me with her hands on her hips.

"Pop-tart is a good breakfast." I protested knowing perfectly well that it wasn't true.

"Right, and May just got a job as a bar tender." she retorted sarcastically and I smirked at the hilarious mental picture she gave me. I liked that about my mom, she had a sense of humor. Now if only she'd let her whole Beverly-used-to-starve-herself-so-now-I'm-going-to-never-give-her-a-break-about-it determination drop. "Besides, I made you breakfast already." she said brightly.

The 'breakfast' she wanted me to finish off was really more of a Christmas feast. I had a few pieces of toast just to please her and then insisted (truthfully) that if I spent anymore time eating I wouldn't have any time to get ready and I'd be late for school.

"She's right," said May "and we can't be late for the first day of school. No one in my class is ever late the first day and I don't wanna be the only one!" May had really been looking forward to going back to school. At least one of us was. She was doing a really good job of pretending Erik didn't exist while other people were around. I was proud of her but it kind of unnerved me that my baby sister was an incredibly good liar. It was sort of like having your puppy dog learn kick-boxing.

"Alright, go get ready," my mom conceded and began to clear the table. We ran off to try and make our hair not look like an animal that had died on our head.

When we got to the bathroom, Erik grabbed a comb and started yanking it mercilessly through our hair. 'Ow. Jeez. Ow!' I complained.

He ignored me.

'Doesn't this put you in pain too?' I thought after a few seconds of waiting for him to respond.

'_I've had worse_' he replied calmly.

'Well I haven't! Well I guess I have, but still. I understand you're sad but I never took you for an Emo,' I persisted as he continued to tug the comb through our awful tangles, 'do you enjoy pain?'

He stopped with the de-tangling and thought '_No, I do not enjoy pain_. _I am simply used to it._'

That made the next few seconds unbelievably awkward. After a while I said "sorry" quietly and truthfully. He didn't reply but started back up with the combing -a little more gently this time. When he was done he swept our hair back into a French pony-tail. We went into the front room and grabbed my backpack (which was the approximate weight of a small first grader).

"I'm leaving, mom. Bye." I called as we walked out the door.

"Bye, Berly!" May shouted.

"Bye. Have fun in fourth grade."

"I will," she looked confused, "can you come back in here?" we walked back inside. I was grateful for the excuse not to get going. Erik didn't really care.

"Why do you look so upset?" she asked in her innocent, sweet little voice.

I sighed. No point in lying to her, "I don't want to go to highschool."

"It can't be that bad," she said, "you do your homework, you kiss boys, you accidentally get pregnant and then you get an abortion. That's all there is to it."

Every one in the room stared at her.

"You spied on me while I was watching Juno, didn't you?" I accused. For every one who thinks this is amusing, it is. But it is also sick and disturbing.

She blushed, "yes."

I groaned. 'Well I certainly hope that isn't what happens' I thought.

He strongly agreed.

It turned out we just barely caught the bus. I-being terrible with directions- had forgotten where the bus stop was and when we found our way their, the doors were just closing. Erik made the driver let us on anyway. He could be very persuasive. I willed the ride to drag out as long as possible, I was in no hurry to arrive. We got there before I knew it.

I stepped out of the bus and looked around. Lots of people. Lots and lots of people. Fortunately, Nora, Sandy and Sam (who Erik insisted was crushing on me) were going to the same school as we were. Lola was too but I hadn't decided wether that was a good thing or a bad thing.

Unfortunately, so was Joe/Raoul. I caught site of them near the door and stopped walking. Why did Joe have to be so hot? Over the past three weeks I had tried to convince my self that I didn't like him (as in like like him) but I knew I did.

Erik, of course, was disgusted with me. He cut off my oggling and walked inside. We found our locker and shoved my backpack into it. It was funny, I'd gotten used to the weight, now that it was off I felt like I could jump to the moon. I tried to focus on that rather than the fact that Erik was most likely about to tell me off.

It appeared he had nothing to say though. I think he was giving me the silent treatment.

The bell rang and we ran off to catch our first class. French class. I knew from the first time the teacher looked at us that she hated me. Our being late did not go over well with her. We discovered something pretty cool though: Erik had always spoken to me in English, which I found weird because, being from France, I had expected him to speak French but he never even had an accent. The cool thing was that we both somehow knew French as a second language. It was like weird and cool at the same time. There needs to be a word for stuff that's weird and cool at the same time: CoolWeird.

The only person I knew in that class was Lola. I guessed that was a good thing, no sign of Joe/Raoul. If it wasn't for them being a package deal though, I would have wished for Joe to be in all of my classes. More silent treatment from everyone's favorite Phantom.

Five hours later, we practically jumped out of our seat when the bell rang for the end of the day. We waited as our math teacher listed our homework assignments -homework on the first day. I'd expected that but not this much of it- and then got out as fast as we could. Our backpack wasn't as heavy as before, it was now the approximate weight of a small kindergartner.

The first day of highschool hadn't been as bad as I thought it would. But it had been almost as bad as I thought it would.

'How much you want to bet our back's completely messed up by the end of the year?' I thought to Erik as we struggled to sling it onto our shoulders.

'_I would not bet on that_' he really hadn't liked highschool anymore than I had. Too many people. Too much broad daylight.

'Fine. How much you want to bet our back is halfway messed up by the end of the year?'

'_That is more likely_'

We successfully got our deadweight backpack on and made our way into the crowd of people trying to push their way out the door.

When we finally got outside, we saw Sandy. 'Good' I thought, I had missed her. Although it was a little weird that she hadn't been well enough to let me see her yesterday but she was here at school today. Maybe she had been almost better yesterday and her mom just wanted her to rest? She looked perfectly healthy though. I made a note to ask her about it and started to walk in her direction.

Erik sort of froze up inside my head. Very little emotion, -like, even less than before- no specific thoughts. That was weird. But then again, everything in my life was weird. Extra points to anyone who can think of something that wasn't.

She caught site of us and this look of panic crossed her face, like she was afraid I was going to bite her head off or something. Also weird. Was there something she didn't want me to know? Anyway, she turned and started speed walking in the other direction.

Well that made me mad. Didn't she consider us friends anymore? Hadn't she not seen me in almost a month? I started to go after her but my stupid backpack slowed me down. I took it off (not caring that we would have to go through the frustration of getting it back on later) and left it where it was. Erik apparently did not object, he was still all frozen up. I wondered what was going on with him as I jogged to catch up with Sandy.

The thing about Sandy is that she's slower than slow. Even when she's really trying hard not to be. So I caught up with her easily. "Hey, Sandy. Where have you been lately?"

She turned around to face us, slowly and reluctantly, like she really, really didn't want to. And then she did the strangest thing: in this quiet and regretful voice, she went "_Erik_?" Well I guess it wasn't Sandy who said it. It was... well you all know who said it, the stupid author of this fic made it too predictable. Christine said it.

Anyway, when she said it he unfroze. He got this terrible wave of emotion. He got suicidally depressed and murderously angry and something else that I couldn't identify, it was like the way I felt for May and my parents only a lot more and in a different way. I guess it was love. His love for her put my crush on Joe to shame. I almost cried.

'_Christine_" it was just a whisper. In fact, it wasn't even a whisper, our mouth just formed the word.

I silently asked myself why I hadn't seen that coming. Well, Erik's thoughts were all in a buzz and I think he had sort of forgotten I existed so I took this opportunity to think some stuff that he wouldn't have axes to. I considered the situation.

First, I thought of the bad things. Christine was with Sandy. Sandy was with Christine. That made my life a whole lot more difficult.

Next, I tried to find a bright side to the situation. Well, I figured the only way all Hell could break loose would be if he tried to kiss her.

All Hell broke loose.

**Summer: hahaha. Poor Berly, I abused her. I'M ABUSIVE!!**

**awkward silence**

**Summer: um, yeah.** **I had a spazz attack**. **Anyway, review and make the world a better place!**

**Erik: flame this story and you will wake up tomorrow morning** **to find your self in my torture chamber.**

**Summer: wasn't that only in the book?**

**Erik: gives Summer another death glare**

**Summer: NO NOT AGAIN!! That's twice in one chapter! fetal position**


	6. Of Katie Parry And Mouthwash

**HI!**

**Summer: hello every one. Sorry this one is a bit late. I actually have good excuses this time though! One excuse is that I just so happen to be Jewish and my Bat Mitzvah is in less than a week, so I'm either too nervous to sit down and write for long periods of time or I'm practicing. The other excuse is that I now officially own a copy of the novel Breaking Dawn and I plan on reading approximately 100 pages per day. GO TWILIGHT!!**

**Erik: no one flamed so I guess I won't be punjabbing anybody.**

**Summer: thank you again to Broadway Geek, Sarahriah, Phantom's Obsessor and Evony Shadow for reviewing loyally. thank you also, for reviewing,** **to A Squee In The Distance (who has an awesome pen name).**

**disclaimer, I own nothing. Erik doesn't...**

**Erik: -Gives Summer another death glare-**

**Summer: Erik owns absolutely every thing. -curls up into a ball-**

Right. Erik and Christine. Kissing. Being a slight phangirl, I would have been perfectly fine with this under normal circumstances. Circumstances that didn't involve me involuntarily making out with Sandy. Well I guess I shouldn't say making out, it was just regular kissing. But still...

Here I was fourteen years old and never having kissed a guy (for any of you who are shocked, what does the word nerd not say to you?) and yet I was in a lip-lock with a girl. I have nothing against homosexuals but, despite the rumors, I am not one of them and never plan on becoming one. So, as you can imagine, this didn't have me in the best of moods.

This little scene was made even better by the fact that we were in broad daylight and in front of oh, maybe, three hundred other highschool students (probably more than that, those were just the ones I could see) who were mostly older than us and therefore could easily torture us for the rest of our life. Great. And just when the Beverly-is-a-lesbo rumors had started to die way. I had a feeling they were about to start right back up again.

Anyhow, Sandy/Christine and I both recovered from shock after about a second and a half. We pulled away at the same time. I slapped Erik. Which, of course, meant slapping myself. Lovely.

He was not happy with me. I was perfectly fine with that. I wasn't happy with him either.

I turned to see pretty much the population of our new school (including a few teachers) staring at us. Also lovely. I blushed the color of a tomato and felt our face and ears burn as if someone had attacked them with a blowtorch.

Sandy and I had always been good at exchanging glances and knowing what the other one was thinking. That skill came in handy now. We burst into song:

"I kissed a girl,

I liked it!

The taste of her cherry chap stick!"

Thank you, Katie Parry!

Anyway, a few people laughed but no one stopped staring at us. I guess our skills and Katie Parry's awesomeness weren't enough to save us. I looked over at Sandy/Christine. Who ever had control of their body didn't look any happier about this than I did.

Luckily, who ever was in control that didn't look any happier about this than I did, was a smart cookie. "_Okay. We, being freshmen, knew we were going to be pranked by every one else a lot. So we decided to get them before they could get us. That wasn't real, it was just a stage kiss."_ I assumed it was Christine saying it because it sounded convincing and Sandy lied even worse than I did. I figured she must have gotten the stuff about freshmen getting pranked from Sandy's memory like Erik had gotten the song from mine on that one day in camp. Huh, I never would have guessed that was her reason for not coming.

The awkward silence dispersed into low voices and mumbled conversations. People started to leave in groups of twos and threes. I decided not to say anything about our 'freshman prank' because people would see that I was lying and then they wouldn't believe the story.

I turned us around and fled towards the busses (struggling to grab our backpack as we passed it). As I was running through the crowd, I happened to catch a glimpse of Joe/Raoul. They were still in shock, I think. They were standing motionless, with their mouth hanging open so wide they were probably catching flies. Their hilarious reaction almost made me giggle. Almost.

As soon as we got onto our bus I flopped down next to Sam. It was the only seat that didn't contain people who I either didn't know, were glaring at us, or looked just plain weird.

"Freshman prank?" he asked us. He was making an attempt at being skeptical but really just looked happy that we were next to him. Maybe he really was crushing on me. Even so, I wasn't about to tell Erik he was right.

Erik and I were sort of having a face off in our head. We weren't saying anything to each other so it couldn't count as an argument. We both just sat in silent rage with the other.

"Yeah." I answered briefly. I hadn't meant for my tone to be so harsh, I was just angry. He looked a little offended and didn't talk to me for the rest of the ride.

When the bus creaked to a halt at our stop, I shot off the bus as fast as was humanly possible -backpack and all. I had been planning on running all the way home but I lost my way again and the added time made me tired so I slowed to a walk. Erik remembered how to get home, but he decided he was going to be a pain and not show me. When we finally did get to our door, I unlocked it as fast as I could and flew inside, bolting it behind us.

"Hi, Berly!" May chimed enthusiastically when she saw us. She was in the front room, coloring again. I bet if she had homework the first day, she would be doing it. She was already halfway done with her picture because she got out about fifteen minutes before me and didn't have to take the bus.

I grumbled a little bit in response and Erik glared at thin air.

She cocked her head to the side a little and said "why are you so upset?" it was a little creepy how she always knew what was going on with us. Not that it wasn't obvious, a beetle could probably have been able to tell we were upset.

"highschool went badly" I didn't think it was a good idea to tell her about Christine and Raoul. Too bad I sucked at lying.

She of course knew I was lying. "Why won't you tell me?" she wined. Then she smiled a little, "Did you get in trouble for doing something you weren't supposed to?"

"No," I said and then added, "but Erik did."

She gasped, "what did you do, Erik?"

"_Nothing of significance. Beverly is simply angered by the fact that school did not go smoothly and so she blames the first person whose name comes into her mind" _he said after making sure no one but May was around. He didn't think it was a good idea to inform her of the whole SandyChristine concept either, which meant not telling her about the past hour. It was pretty reasonable, but I wasn't in a good enough mood to acknowledge that.

"Psh. 'Nothing of significance'" I muttered as I stalked off to the nearest bathroom. When we got there I flung open the medicine cabinet and grabbed a bottle of electric blue liquid. A full bottle of mouthwash, it hadn't yet been opened. I screwed off the cap and chugged almost the entire thing.

"Um, honey? You know you're not supposed to swallow it right?" I looked over my shoulder to see my dad standing in the door way.

"Yeah." I was still acting grumpy, my tone was harsh and dismissive.

He looked confused. "You in a bad mood?"

"_Yes_" Erik answered for me.

"Why?"

"Never mind. You're home early. Why?" normally he wasn't home until at least three hours after I got out of school.

"Yeah. I was getting to that. You saw the 2004 movie of Phantom of the Opera right?" he said. That was ironic.

"Phantom? Yeah. Just once. I was at Lola's house. I only saw it once." I gushed out in a rush.

"Okay then," he said, looking confused. It looked like my lying skills were getting worse by the day, "Lola who?"

"Um, Lola Andrew, I think. I'm not actually sure about her last name."

"Yeah, it's Andrew. I didn't know you were friendly with her."

"I'm not really. She invited Sandy and Sandy invited me." the thought of Sandy made Erik and I pick up where we had left off with our mental face off. "Dad, I really don't want to talk about this."

"Lola Andrew?"

"No, Phantom."

Pause.

"Why not? Thought you liked it." he said.

"'cause, um, I don't want to argue with you about Erik verses Raoul." I spit out. I was, once again, a slight phangirl, but he was all for Raoul. Great, I had just let Erik know that. I would have to sleep less to make sure nobody got Punjabbed.

"Erik?" my dad looked confused. Again.

"Yeah, Erik."

"Who's Erik? I don't remember that character." by then I think the look of confusion was stuck permanently on his face.

"The Phantom. Erik is the freaking Phantom!" I was unbelievably agitated by this point so when I talked, I of course sounded murderous.

Dad gave me a weird look. "I don't think he had a name. I'm pretty sure he just went by Phantom." He'd seen the stage production of Phantom twice.

"I have a reliable source telling me its Erik!" I was so worked up by now I was almost screaming.

He looked a little bit offended, "what source?"

" I don't know, it's just a source!!" okay, now I was full fledged shrieking.

"Okay, okay. Calm down." he probably should have sent me right to my room and told me I could do something awesome just to tell me I wasn't allowed to anymore two seconds later. I was lucky that he was being so patient with me. "Anyway, I won two tickets to see the stage production of Phantom tonight and I thought you would want to come more than Mom would. May's too little."

"I'm sorry, Dad. I just don't want to go. Take Mom. I'll baby sit for May." she was probably the best person to be forced to spend a few hours with seeing as she was probably the one person Erik would refrain from killing. Erik heard this thought and contradicted it. I pretended I hadn't noticed.

I continued to give him he silent treatment for the next hour or so while I did my homework -I would have asked him for help, seeing that he was a genius, but I was still too busy over-reacting to what had happened earlier that day. I still refused to talk (and think) to him even after Mom and Dad had left for their show and we and May were alone in the living room with May happily seated on the couch reading the book she'd just checked out from her school's small library.

I pretended not to remember that he was with me until he went "_You are extraordinarily talkative tonight." _still good at sarcasm. May barely even glanced up, she was used to us talking to each other by now.

"I'm giving you the cold shoulder," I replied in a 'duh' kind of way, "it's anger. A concept I'd of thought you would grasp fairly well." my mood was hardly better than before.

He ignored that and thought '_it would have been useful to see the production. It would make it easier for me to understand what people here think of me and it would make it easier for _you _to understand what people where I come from would have thought of you.'_

Implying, of course, that my style would have been... frowned upon. Strangely, that didn't really make me anymore angry than I already was. I was getting all angered out.

'Meh. I'm not having you kissing any actresses.' I thought back, knowing perfectly well that he wouldn't have.

'_I will not dignify that comment with a response.'_

Another pause

"It's your turn to break the awkward silence" I was a lot more calm now. I was barely angry at him at all now. Barely more than usual.

"_That it is not. I've already broken the silence_ _you kept up when you were so unreasonably angered."_

'unreasonably?' I thought -May didn't need to here this- 'you humiliated me. What ever small hope I had of not being an outcast in highschool just got violently destructed.' I knew it wasn't as bad as I made it sound. I was just still cranky from my recent anger-spurt.

'Besides,' I continued, 'that wasn't an awkward silence, it was an angry silence and I already broke the one that happened when you were abusively combing our hair.'

'_You are perfectly aware that you are not as upset as you are trying to make yourself sound'_ that just proved it. He knew stuff about me that I didn't even know.

"Just break the awkward silence." I said out loud.

"_You have already broken the silence by requesting that I break it." _I hated it when he was right.

"You can play the piano right?" that was random.

"_You already know the answer to_ _that._" I did.

"Why haven't you ever played anything before?" I asked curiously.

"_Comparing the music I've written to the songs you know? That wouldn't be suspicious at all now would it?"_ more sarcasm.

"Guess you're right. But my parents aren't home and May already knows you're here. You could play something now." I wanted to hear his music. What were the odds that it wouldn't be good?

He glanced at May, thinking she wouldn't like it. He was right I guess, it probably wouldn't exactly be pop. I had a way around that though.

'Don't worry about that. She's into that book. And when she's into a book, she's practically deaf to the rest of the world' I thought. Just to prove it, I quietly sat down next to her and said "May?"

No response.

He remained unconvinced.

'Fine. How about this?' I scooted closer to her and screamed "MAY!?" in her ear. She didn't even flinch. Her eyes darted from word to word without realizing that the rest of the world was there. I flounced over to the piano bench and sat down.

He still decidedly refused but he played a short tune all the same. It only lasted about three seconds but, oh Lord, it was good. Really sad too. For the second time that day, I almost cried.

We heard a small sound behind us and turned to see May staring at us with her head cocked to the side and her big, innocent blue eyes were full of tears. "That was sad" she whispered. But as soon as she looked back at her book she was enveloped in it again. She went off to find somewhere more quiet to read.

Okay. So Erik's quiet, three-second tune could pull her out of her book trance when my bellowing in her ear couldn't?

Eerie.

**Summer: -reads Breaking Dawn-**

**Erik: she reads like May (only more violently on occasion) so she won't be saying much.**

**Summer: -still reading-**

**Erik: review** **and you might just be able to save Summer from insanity -although I personally think it's already too late.** **Flame and you will dearly regret it in exactly one year, four months**, **two weeks,** **five days, nine hours, forty two** **minutes, and twelve point five seconds.**

**Summer: -without looking up from novel- he doesn't say the torture chamber thing anymore because it's only in the book.**

**Erik: -gives summer yet another death glare-**

**Summer: I've gotten used to it -still doesn't look up from novel-**


	7. Of French Class And Wrestling

**Hi!**

**Summer: First of all, thanks to A Squee In The Distance for reviewing again.** **I can't talk about Breaking Dawn cause I'll spoil it! Hehe, I was at the bookstore til about** **three in the morning for Deathly Hallows! Yeah, I did see stage Phantom. Although, when I went they were using the understudy for Erik. He didn't look that huggable, but I would have hugged him anyway!**

**Thanks also to Shadow Archer, Broadway Geek, Sarahriah, Evil Quail, and Royazali for reviewing!**

**By the way. I'm really sorry it's been so long! I'm a monkey. If you want to know my excuses for not updating for a while just ask in a review or something and I'll e-mail you.**

**Erik: still no flames. So I won't be killing any one in their sleep.**

**Summer: Erik**, **Squee says hi and that she'll personally refurbish her basement just for you. Don't you just love your rabid phangirls??**

**Erik: actually, they can get creepy... Summer owns nothing.**

**Summer: -reads-**

Riiinnggg!! Alarm clock. Again.

Great. More highschool. Just blissful. 'Shoot me,' I thought bitterly.

'_That would be suicide.'_ one of the most annoying things about not being alone in my body (and there were a lot of very annoying things) was that Erik could always hear and see things that I didn't want him to. He'd known perfectly well that my thought hadn't been directed at him.

I took a deep breath and counted down from ten with my eyes closed. Then I went through the dreams I could remember: the usual nightmares and him doing nothing particularly interesting while I slept.

'Still don't think we should be a hermit?' I thought.

'_I still don't think __you__ should be a hermit'_

'But you yourself are fine with being a hermit?'

'_Stop asking meaningless questions and get dressed_.' and there was that charming not-answering-my-questions habit again. How come he always answered all of May's questions but never mine?

'_Because her questions have some significance and yours do not._' he answered plainly. At least he answered.

I sighed groggily and reluctantly got up. Finding cloths was a problem, yesterday's outfit had been the only one the two of us could agree on and we couldn't wear it two days in a row. I was still trying to be flexible about this situation but when it came to cloths I had limits. I already wasn't all that popular so I really shouldn't have cared what people thought of the cloths I wore but, for some unfathomable reason, I did. For another thing, I didn't own many things that Erik would tolerate.

By the time we found something we both would allow ourselves to agree on, it was already almost time to be at the bus stop. We were so late that my mom barely even minded that all I had to eat was a quick granola bar. She had bought more last night on her way home from the show- she was probably the one and only person in this world that would stop at the twenty-four hour grocery store in the middle of the night just because the only time she could remember to go shopping was while she was coming home from an evening production.

Erik, once again, "persuaded" the bus driver to let us on even though the doors were closing just as we arrived. I was a bit surprised; I had been expecting to get weird looks owing to yesterday's ... incident. Instead, people barely glanced at us as we passed them. They all seemed to be talking to each other, which would have been completely normal except that it looked like they were doing their best not to be over heard.

Sam was sitting by Nora. I was glad, I really didn't need him crushing on me right now. I just wanted to be friends but I was too much of a softie to tell him that. I resolved to pretend I hadn't noticed for the time being.

Erik thought that was a bad idea. He didn't say so, but I knew he did. I pretended not to notice that to.

What if this all ended in a big fight and Sam and I would never be friends again. What if Nora somehow got involved and I would never be friends again with her either?

Erik thought that was more than likely. I, once again, pretended not to notice. A tiny voice in the back of my head (this one actually belonging to myself) told me that I would have to stop doing that and that in the end, it would get me nowhere. He agreed. I ignored them both.

When the bus reached the school, we hopped off, struggled with our dead weight backpack again, and headed to French class. I had a feeling it would be one of my favorite subjects. It wasn't really fascinating and the teacher hated my guts, but I already knew everything. So I didn't really have to do anything. That was always a bonus.

When school was finally over, we struggled with our dead weight backpack yet again and headed outside. The fact that it wasn't the first day this time hadn't made school seem any better. Plus we had more homework. So our backpack was the average weight of a small first grader again.

'School is six hours, right?' I thought as we pushed through the crowd of people all trying to get out the door at the same time.

'_Six and a half_.'

'And yet it seems like six and a half years. Why is that? I mean, I would think-' I stopped mid sentence when something caught my attention. Sandy/Christine and Joe/Raoul walked past us without, apparently, noticing we were there.

"So... this could be a little awkward at times" she was saying. I had no doubt that they were discussing the fact that they had been joined by their lovely friends. Though, this conversation also involved me, I felt no urge what so ever to go up to them and voice my opinion on the subject. My own lovely friend apparently didn't either.

"But still, we should hang out." Joe (at least, I'm pretty sure it was Joe) replied.

Most of the bitterness I felt wasn't mine. But, all the same, I felt a tiny spark of jealously that I knew belonged to me. I dismissed it, telling myself that I shouldn't feel jealous and that there was nothing to be jealous of.

"_Of course_" I could tell it was Christine who responded to Joe's comment rather than Sandy because the two of them had relatively different ways of talking. It looked like Sandy agreed though. That didn't surprise me, she and Joe had been friends in the past. What surprised me was when she giggled and twisted a lock of blonde hair around her finger -I knew it was Sandy because she had a really unique laugh/giggle, one that only she could pull off. But, was she... flirting?

This time, the little prick of jealousy was bigger. Sandy had never flirted with anyone as far as I knew. She'd only had one or two crushes in her life. She acted as if all the guys looked the same to her... until now.

"I was just thinking that it might be a little awkward with us just being friends and... them... wanting to be more than friends. Maybe there's something we could do about that?" the implications in Sandy's response made me shudder. Why was she talking like that? What was going on with her? What disease had spread through her brain to make her act this way?

"So... maybe we should go out too?" Joe seemed perfectly confident, not even acknowledging the possibility that she might turn him down. I guess that really wasn't a possibility though. She nodded and did the finger-hair-twirly-thing again.

'What? But, they're too young to be dating! And... they barely know each other.' I thought spastically. It wasn't really true, Sandy and Joe had each actually known the other for quite a while. Those weren't my real reasons for not wanting them to go out. Really, I just had too much of a crush on Joe to watch peacefully as my best friend flirted with him.

Either way, I didn't get any response to my thoughts. Erik was, once again, not paying attention to me. He was already plotting out ways to break them up. Luckily, he wasn't planning on killing anyone, but several violent possible scenarios ran through his mind.

I didn't like the prospect of Sandy and Joe being together in that way, but I didn't want either of them getting hurt. And, though I might have been a little too grudging to admit it just then, she was my friend and I wanted her to be happy. I was about to tell him to forget whatever plans he may have, but... I sort of wanted them to break up also. What was I supposed to do?

"Beverly?" I was so deep in thought I didn't really hear the person behind me trying to get my attention. Luckily, Erik had it covered.

"_Hello, Sam_" he said, turning to face him.

Sam looked a little confused. Probably because -like Sandy and Chritine- Erik and I had very different ways of talking. Even if we would have said the same words we would have had different ways of saying them. But he just shrugged it off and said "noticed anything?"

"Huh?" was my intelligent response.

"Well, weren't you expecting people to be talking about what happened with you yesterday?" he was grinning while he said this.

I smirked. "Yeah, I guess I was." I frowned, "actually, no one's said anything about that to me all day."

"Right. In order to make people forget about those rumors, I started a new rumor. I told a couple people Nora's mom used to do professional wrestling. Untrue, of course." he beamed. Well that was thoughtful of him.

"And how does Nora feel about this?" I inquired.

"She's fine with it. That's what we were talking about on the bus this morning. She'll probably go around telling people it's true too."

"And how does Nora's mom feel about this?"

He stopped smiling. "I don't know" he replied seriously. I laughed.

He walked away saying he had to go ask Nora if his rumor was okay with her mom. I turned back around to face Sandy/Christine and Joe/Raoul again. "Gahh!" Well, they weren't talking anymore. Let's just say this: for those of you who've never watched your best friend kissing the guy you're crushing on, I hope you never have to.

'So, you had a plan to get them broken up?,' I thought slowly, 'what was it again?'

**Summer: So ends chap seven. Once again, I'm really sorry about the long wait for this one!**

**Erik: Review and Summer will probably update sooner for the next chapter. Flame and I'll Punjab you in your sleep.**

**Summer: Also, school starts for me very soon so when that happens, I'll probably update** **along the lines of every weekend. At least I'll try!**


	8. Of Side Bangs And Math Books

**Summer: HI!!**

**Erik: Thank you to Astrophysics Rock, Broadway Geek, and Shadow Archer for reviewing. They make Summer happy and spastic.**

**Summer: I (sadly) don't own Phantom of the Opera**, **any dignity, or anything else that I don't own.**

**Erik: The first part of this chapter is narrated by Sandy.** **Don't get confused.**

_**Sandy Hall...**_

Wow. First kiss. What made this moment even better was that it was with Joe! Honestly, how many people get to date a nice, funny, hot guy? I felt incredibly lucky that I did. The one and only thing that bugged me was that it wasn't just Joe I was kissing...

We both jumped and broke apart when a loud cracking noise sounded somewhere near us. It sounded like the spine of a heavy book hitting the hard floor very suddenly. I turned to see Berly/Erik bending over to pick up the math book that one of them had apparently just dropped. I wasn't sure which one of them it was that threw me the glare and they straightened back up.

'Oh! I'd completely forgotten their locker was so close' I thought, sighing in frustration.

'_It's not your fault_' thought Christine, who was also blaming herself for forgetting that they could probably see us. And hear us. Oh man...

Joe/Raoul glared at them and than turned back to us putting a hand on our shoulder. I think Joe was about to kiss me again but before he could, Berly/Erik walked swiftly between us to get to her friend (Sam and the other one who's name I could never remember who were talking a few yards away), knocking his hand away and accidently hitting me with her bag. They didn't look at us. I had no doubt they'd done it on purpose.

Joe/Raoul shook their head angrily and walked through the open doors of the building. They didn't have a hard time doing this seeing as most of the students had gotten through by now and were already on their busses. Berly's friends went too. After Sam and that girl left, Berly and Erik lingered for a while. I could tell they were talking in their head because of the frequent way her expression (very slightly) changed. I had a feeling they were arguing because of the way her eyebrows pulled together a bit.

'_Poor thing_'

'Which one of them?'

'_Both_'

'Yeah. You're right.'

Then they went to catch the bus too. I decided it was probably a good idea to do the same and followed them. I realized, with some disappointment, that they were on the same bus as us and climbed onto the bright yellow vehicle right after them. We sat down distractedly by Lola while they stalked all the way to the back and flopped down in an empty seat. All alone.

Lola didn't even try to talk to me. She knew something weird was going on with me, she just wasn't sure what. She knew I wouldn't really pay attention to anything she said. If she were to ever find out, I wondered how it would affect her. She was the most devoted phangirl I knew.

'_I just hope she never __does__ find out_' Christine thought quietly.

'Me too' I felt bad for lying to one of my best friends. But desperate times call for desperate measures, right?

I watched Berly/Erik for a while. They were sitting looking intently out the window. Their coffee colored hair fell over their face, getting in their eyes. I thought it was probably out of self-conscious habit. It was still weird though, I knew for a fact that she despised her hair getting in her eyes. As if she had heard that thought, she pulled her mild tangles back into a sloppy pony tail, the kind she usually wore. I'm guessing it was him that scowled briefly and pulled the pony tail out so that their hair was in their face again. She frowned and swung their long side bangs out of their eyes but didn't react when they fell back into place. The familiar face looked so different now, she looked distracted and upset, their eyebrows were still pulled together slightly and I had a feeling there were few times when they weren't, their jaw was tightened defensively and their eyes were hard. All these changes were small ones but drastic all the same. They were the difference between Berly -a close friend for whom I wished nothing but the best- and Beverly -an intimidating stranger for whom I did not know what I wanted.

Their gaze settled on Joe/Raoul. In their dark green eyes, I could see Erik's fierce hatred for Raoul. But at the same time, I could clearly see Berly's feelings for Joe...

'Oh, crap! She likes him.'

'_I know_' her thoughts sounded sympathetic. She was a good soul.

'What are we going to do?

'_I'm sorry. I don't know_'

I sighed. 'What if Berly and I can never talk to each other again? Just each other, with out having to worry about other people hearing. Like we used to. And all because of this.

No response.

'Do you think that could happen?'

'_Sandy, I don't know how this is going to end, but... that would be a possibility._'

I groaned internally. One minute, Berly and I had been best friends, the next, our relationship was difficult and awkward. But I still loved her as a sister. What would happen to us?

_**Beverly Redmond...**_

I shifted awkwardly. I could feel Sandy's eyes on me but I didn't know who was watching me through them.

The bus screeched to a halt at our stop and we got up to get off. I was grateful to be off the bus, too many loud people crammed into the same small space. Erik hated it too, for pretty much the same reason.

I actually had no idea as to how to get the two LoveBirds broken up that didn't involve Erik killing somebody. And if he had a plan (which he might have) he did one heck of a good job of hiding it from me. I wouldn't give up on figuring out a plan though.

When we stalked through the door, May (once again) said "why are you so upset?" she was on the floor of the front room again but this time she was doing her homework: one or two pages of easy looking addition problems.

"Highschool went badly again" it wasn't really a lie, it was true. But it wasn't the whole truth either. Erik didn't say anything, owing to the fact that my mom was in the next room, organizing and reorganizing some papers.

May frowned a bit, and then grinned. "Sandy and Joe are going out aren't they?" There it was again, that creepy ability of hers to see what was going on without even the slightest hint.

"Meh" I said in response.

My mom apparently took this as a yes because she said "aren't they a little young to be dating?" Her eyes never flickered from her boring looking papers.

"_Yes_" I think he and I sort of said it at the same time. I mostly said it because I didn't want them to be dating rather than because I actually agreed. I sort of agreed, but at the same time... I was controversial.

I retreated to my room and flopped down on the bed. 'This is going to be a long year'

'_A long and awkward year_'

I laughed a little bit. He was exactly right on that one. Although, I supposed it would be a long and awkward year for a lot of people. Pretty much every body had some sort of awkward stage at some point in their lives. I smiled. Every one had an awkward stage...

But only a few people had awkward stages that involved dead spirits sharing their bodies.

I was sort of special.

**Summer: Well, that's chap eight. And now you know where the title came from! Sorry it's so short!!**

**Erik: Thank you, once again, to all reviewers.**

**Summer: And to Brooke Blue 'cause she's just awesome! Well**, **TTUTNC** **(ta ta until the next chapter)!**


	9. Of Arguments And Therapy

**Summer: hi! Okay, I know I said I'd be updating every weekend but last weekend I was busy so...**

**Erik: Summer apologizes for abandoning her readers and reviewers. Special thanks to Disney Queen, Broadway Geek and Shadow Archer for reviewing.**

**Summer: I don't own Phantom of the Opera or anything else I don't own.**

**Oh, quick clue-in: The title is Awkward Stage because it's the story of one of the only kids who's awkward stage occurred because of a fictional dead guy talking to her in her head!**

**All of the characters have unique personalities. Sandy is supposed to be a little too nice and sweet for her own good. Joe is supposed to be Mr. HotAndFunny. Sam is supposed to be the lovable type of nerd that you want to adopt and keep with you forever. Lola is supposed to be a little preppy, but** **nice all the same. Beverly is supposed to be nice and funny, if a little on the slow side. You know about Erik, Christine and Raoul.**

**Erik: If you don't**, **I suggest you go read fan fiction** **for something you **_**do**_** know about.**

**Summer: If you haven't already figured this out, these quotie things mean thought: ''. These quotie things mean speech: "".**

**And now, Summer Productions proudly presents... Chapter nine!**

Two weeks. We'd been in school for two weeks and I was sick of it already. Erik really didn't like it either, sometimes I got the feeling he was allergic to sunlight... that wouldn't have been good.

Our day-to-day schedule went something like this:

6:30- wake up. Try to avoid thinking about last night's nightmares.

6:35- have a long and frustrating argument about cloths.

7:00- eat breakfast. Sort of. Eat a granola bar (those things were addictive).

7:20- try to get our hair to not look like a dead animal.

7:35- walk to the bus stop. Try not to be upset about the fact that we're really late and almost missed the bus.

7:45- get to school. Try (usually unsuccessfully) to hatch a plan that will make Sandy/Christine and Joe/Raoul hate each other. Argue about random things for the rest of the school day...

...and so on.

Anyway, two weeks really wasn't a much of a long time when you think about it. But it was long enough for people to pick up on the fact that something weird was going on with us. I usually act weird, but in a different way. Now there were more rumors than ever (one or two that I was pregnant like May had predicted).

It just so happened that this particular afternoon, the school day had just ended and we were walking down the hall, from our math class to our locker. We were arguing about wether the French teacher was plotting my murder or not.

'But didn't you see the way she looked at me when we walked in late? She looked like she wanted to kill me,' I thought stubbornly.

'_I've given you worse looks than that_' was Erik's somber response.

'Right. And you've never plotted anyone's murder' I was getting pretty good at sarcasm too.

Before he could respond, some guy stopped us and asked, "you're Beverly Redmond, right?"

"Yeah." I was glad he had halted our conversation. I was running out of arguments. This guy looked about forty. I knew he looked familiar, but I couldn't put my finger on it.

'We've seen this guy right?' I thought, hoping this would be one of the questions he actually answered.

'_Yes. He is-_'

'I remember now! He's that school counselor dude.' That made him mad. He it really got on his nerves when people interrupted him, it was a sort of pet peeve of his. I didn't remember the name of the guy that was talking to us, but I remembered it had an M in it.

"Good. As I'm sure you know, I'm the school counselor," Mr. M said, confirming my thought, "can I talk to you for a second?"

I really didn't want to but I said "Yeah. Sure" anyway.

'Great, now we need therapy' I thought bitterly. Erik didn't respond, he was wondering what Mr. M wanted with us.

Mr. M's office was right by us so we went inside. He sat down on one side of a desk covered in pictures of who I was guessing were his family and motioned for us to sit down across from him. The chair was huge and made me feel small and unimportant.

"So, I heard that lately you've been acting a little... odd" he began conversationally.

'Okay, I know where this is going,' I thought to Erik, 'he makes it look like he wants to have a conversation and then he starts asking us uncomfortable questions and trying to make us tell him what's wrong with us. I've seen it on TV. Should I play dumb?'

'_If you want to_' he didn't really care what was going on. He was thinking about Sandy/Christine (surprise, surprise).

I grinned internally and shrugged saying, "I always act odd."

Mr. M sighed. Maybe he knew that I was trying to play dumb. "By odd, I don't mean acting odd in general, I mean acting different than you normally do."

"Okay"

"Is there a reason that you're acting differently than usual?"

"I'm not acting different."

"But has it occurred to you that you might be acting differently without even noticing, when the people around you did notice?"

"No."

Another sigh. "Has anything at home to make you feel uncomfortable?"

"Your home or mine?"

"Yours."

I pretended to think for a moment. "Nope."

"Are you sure there's nothing you want to talk about?"

"Yep."

"Then you can go."

We got up out of the huge chair and walked out into the hallway. We stopped at our locker to get our backpack (still painfully heavy) and then went outside -most people had made their escape while I was talking to Mr. M so the door wasn't too crowded.

'Well, that was weird.' I thought, eventually.

I'm not sure wether he was going to respond or not because we were, yet again, stopped by someone who no doubt was about to ask us what was wrong with us.

"Hey, Redmond!" we turned to see Lola about ten yards away, running towards us. At least, she was trying to run, it can't have been that easy seeing as she also had a deadweight backpack.

'Do you feel like another why-are-you-acting-like-an-alien interrogation?' I thought, already knowing the answer.

'_Not particularly_' still so emotionless. It kind of freaked me out.

'Okay then. Let's go, compadre.' we turned back around and continued walking in the opposite direction that Lola was coming from.

"Oh come on! I'm on the track team, I can keep up with you." she called after us. She wasn't lying, in about twenty seconds she had fallen into step beside us.

"You've been acting weird lately." she stated matter-of-factly.

"Oh?"

"Yeah. So what's up with you?" she looked like she wasn't going to give us a break until she found out the answer.

"What makes you think something's up?" I had decided to play dumb again.

"You've been acting really weird lately," she repeated, "especially since Sandy and Joe started going out."

I shrugged. "I like Joe and Sandy's my friend" it seemed like a valid excuse to me.

"That isn't a valid excuse" she said. I stood corrected.

"And why isn't it?"

"Sandy is everyone's friend. And every girl in the school likes Joe, he beyond hot."

Erik silently wondered if this included herself.

"So I've noticed."

Her shoulders slumped. "Sandy won't tell me anything either. And neither will Joe. And they're both doing the same thing as you. Is it something about me?"

"No."

"Then why won't you tell me?"

Erik, wasn't really angry with Lola, he once again wasn't paying much attention and didn't care what was going on. My own patience, however, abruptly boiled down. "Look, why can't you just accept that I'm a freak and go make up rumors about me like everyone else? Why do you have to know so bad?"

She looked completely unfazed by my angry questions. "People don't just act normal one day and then start acting weird the next. No one's programed to just change at the flick of a switch, everyone has thoughts going through their head. I want to know what yours are."

As quickly as my unforeseen anger had started, it disappeared. The thing was, a lot of people did think other people just acted weird for no reason at all, not everyone acknowledged the fact that everyone else had thoughts and feelings. I was glad that Lola did. But I still wasn't telling her.

"Okay. Well, I'm still not telling you but... feel free to try and figure it out on your own." what were the odds that she would guess right anyway. Actually, if I remembered correctly, she was a pretty obsessive phangirl...

She smiled brightly. "Great. So, I can make, like... observations?"

"Sure. Um, observe way."

"Awesome! So can you come to my house this Saturday?"

Sigh. What the heck. "Sure."

**Summer: And there you have it.** **I'm sorry if my description of highschool is inaccurate. I'm not actually in highschool yet...**

**This one was kind of short. I'm planning on the next one being a lot longer. Erik has blind dates every night this week so I can't send him after you if you flame.**

**Erik: ...I do?**

**Summer: So I'll have to send some one else after you if you flame... I know, RAOUL! Hahahahaha, fear the FOPPISHNESS!! Flame and I'll send Raoul after you and if you review I'll set Erik up on a blind date with you.**

**Erik: you mean the other Erik, right?**


	10. Of Flat Screens and Evil DVD Players

**Summer:** **Hi!! Special thanks to Broadway Geek, Astrophysics Rock, Zombina, and Shadow Archer for their fabulously wonderful reviews. Sorry Erik never showed up for those blind dates. I don't really think he liked the idea... he tried to Punjab me in my sleep.**

**Erik: She sleeps with her hand at the level of her eyes.**

**Summer: Yup. I developed that habit after the plastic-surgery-episode. Remember?**

**Erik: Oh, yeah... the plastic-surgery-episode. I still haven't forgiven you for that.**

**Summer: Well, I was just trying to help! How was I supposed to know the morphine would wear off? But let's not go into further details on that subject.**

**Erik: Right. Our dear readers don't need to know about that. Summer, thankfully, doesn't own Phantom of the Opera.**

**Summer: Nor do I own anything else that I don't own.** **And now, the moment we've all been waiting for...**

'Good morning, Sunshine!' I thought ecstatically as I woke up.

'_You seem cheerful_' Erik commented dryly.

'It's Saturday' he didn't need more explanation than that. I looked at the clock. 11:32. 'Hey, what time are we supposed to be at Lola's house?' I had known I would forget. Having my lovely friend around made remembering things sort of unnecessary.

'_The 'observations' begin in approximately an hour and a half_' he answered emotionlessly (still), quoting Lola. At least, that was the thought he meant for me to hear, the thought he didn't want me to hear went something like _'The freak show begins in approximately an hour and a half'._

The fist of guilt punched me in the face and the awful memory of last night's nightmares came at me like a flood. 'Oh, sorry. I really hadn't thought about it that way' I thought, earnestly.

He didn't answer. He liked to pretend I couldn't hear the stuff running through his mind that he didn't want me to.

'So, that gives us plenty of time to argue about cloths' I thought, feeling that a change of subject was greatly needed.

In an hour and a half exactly (Erik liked to be precise), I trudged into the living room where my mom was reading some more papers with print so small it looked like you needed a microscope to see it. "Hey mom, can you drive me to Lola's house?"

"Lola Andrew? I didn't know you were friends with her" my mom said, looking up from her microscopic print.

"She was Phantom of the Opera at the Andrews' house." my dad called from the kitchen. He didn't work on Saturdays. "Oh, speaking of Phantom-"

"Can't talk, late already!" I said. I felt bad for cutting my dad off, but a conversation about Phantom probably wouldn't end well for any of us. We walked in the direction of the front room where May was happily scribbling on an easy-looking sheet of addition problems. Doing her homework on Saturday -she was a good soul.

'_No, she is simply more responsible than you are_'. If I didn't know better, I would sometimes wonder if Erik really did like my sister that much or if he just wanted to make me feel bad. But I knew better.

I shrugged. 'I won't deny it' I thought, earning his annoyance.

"Alright, I'll take you right now if you're in that much of a hurry" my mom chuckled, following us into the front room and then out the door and into the car.

When we got to Lola's house (though Erik still really didn't want to be there) we walked in awkwardly after her mom answered the door.

"Lo, your friend is here," Mrs. Andrew called in a random direction.

Lola bounced into the room looking disconcertingly exited. It scared me a little. I was subconsciously starting to brainstorm excuses to leave early that would sound normal. Erik was too, only his excuses weren't so normal.

"Hi, Beverly," Lola chirped, "come on in."

She lead us into a room with two big, squishy-looking couches and a huge flat screen TV (the kind that most guys secretly daydream about) attached to one of the walls and plopped down on one of the couches. She motioned for us to do the same. We remained standing.

"Okay. You want to watch a movie?" she asked, still frighteningly cheerful.

I raised our eyebrows, "You mean no interrogation?"

"Sure. Let's watch a movie."

This was good. Movies didn't make Erik want to smash stuff. In fact, he usually just zoned them out. He had commented that they were pointless and time consuming. My response had been that we couldn't all see operas on a nightly basis and this was how modern day people entertained themselves.

"Okay." I said mildly.

"Great. We should watch Phantom."

"Huh?"

"Phantom of the Opera. You know, the 2004 movie?"

"Uh, I don't really like that one."

"That means you haven't seen it enough times." she opened up the DVD case that had been sitting on the coffee table next to her and switched on the TV. As the main menu for the movie filled the screen, she said "oh, by the way, I invited Sandy and Joe over too."

"I'm sorry, _what?!_"

_**Joe White...**_

The car stopped and I looked out the window at the house I didn't want to be at. Why had we agreed to go to Lola's place again? I would have been perfectly fine with it if it had just been her, Sandy/Christine and I (and Raoul). But no, we weren't that lucky. I just hoped things didn't get violent again like they had the first time we had met up with Beverly/Erik. Of course, Raoul had different names for them: TheGirl/ThatMonster, TheGirl/ThatThing, etc...

We had given Sandy/Christine a ride over. Now we looked at them. They were staring straight ahead like they were beginning to regret coming here too. Still, no turning back I guessed. It would have sounded to suspicious to say "Thanks for the ride, Dad but can you take us back home? We've decided we don't like Lola anymore" or anything like that and I couldn't think of anything better. Neither could Raoul.

Speaking of whom, he was mentally preparing for the epic battle that he was convinced would take place as soon as Beverly/Erik caught site of us.

'Give it a rest, dude. They're not gonna do anything. It was you that started it last time.' I thought conversationally.

'_Your tolerance for them gets more aggravating by the minute._' he thought in reply.

It was true that I didn't hate Beverly/Erik, which annoyed Raoul to no end. For some reason, I found this funny. I shrugged and thought 'I like Beverly.'

He raised an eyebrow as we climbed out of the car accompanied by Sandy/Christine.

I rolled our eyes, 'not like that. I mean as a friend.'

He let that one pass. He knew I was telling the truth because he would have been able to tell if I was lying. He was still annoyed though. And I still found his annoyance funny. Which annoyed him even more.

The four of us made it up to the front door and Sandy rang the bell. Mrs. Andrew answered the door saying that the other friend whose name she couldn't remember was already there and she and Lola were starting a movie.

We walked into the room with the magnificent flat screen. Lola was happily pushing buttons on a complicated DVD player with a lot of wires connected to it. Beverly/Erik were leaning against a wall with their eyes closed. They were rubbing their temples but their fingers moved to fast and they were to tense for them to be at all relaxed. They were muttering to each other in French under their breath. If we had been able to hear them, we probably would have been able to understand it.

"What's up?" I asked, trying not to let Raoul's negative feelings show in my voice.

Beverly answered without opening their eyes, "Lola has decided that we're going to watch the 2004 movie, Phantom of the Opera. However, it seems that, no matter what she does with the DVD player, it always skips to certain scenes." she spoke through a mouthful of clenched teeth. It looked like her control was barely existent.

"Which scenes?" Sandy's voice held both worry and curiosity. I could tell that seeing the movie that portrayed her most guarded memories wasn't easy for Christine either.

"Parts that are 'emotionally difficult' for the Phantom, as my mom puts it," Lola answered, turning to face us, "isn't that kind of funny?"

"_Yes, hilarious._" I was guessing that was Erik. It sounded to angry to be Beverly. He was, of course, being sarcastic but he sounded unnervingly serious.

I looked away from them, afraid they would explode any second. Considering the expression on their face, it wasn't unlikely. Raoul agreed. He wondered wether Erik had messed with the DVD player to make it defective.

'Oh, that's likely,' I thought, 'who doesn't love emotional difficulties?'

Lola was completely oblivious to the distress of the people surrounding her. "Watch what happens when I push the pause button." she said and punched one of the many buttons. The movie skipped to a random scene. "See," she whined and then perked up, "Ooh! This is the part where the Phantom's mask comes off. It's so funny, everyone's like 'OMG, sunburn of dooooom!'"

'_This isn't good. If he gets any angrier the girl's control will slip and we will all be in danger'_ Raoul thought dramatically.

'Definitely. Agreed.' I thought in response. It struck me that that was kind of weird, he and I rarely agreed. But I had more urgent things to focus on. We turned slowly to look at Beverly/Erik, still afraid of what we would see.

Only to find them not there.

**Summer: Haha. I liked that one!**

**Erik: What do you mean you liked that one? It put me in emotional pain. By the way, Summer tried to make a point of making Raoul overly annoying in this particular chapter. She apologizes if it seems unrealistic.**

**Summer: And also, I know I said Joe is supposed to be funny. He's more funny under less serious circumstances, it's sort of hard to be funny in Joe's situation. Erik, sorry I put you in emotional pain. You'll still go after anyone who flames, right?**

**Erik: Sure, why not?**

**Summer: Yayyers!! Now review my minions. REVIEW!!**


	11. Of Sprinting And Civilized Conversations

**Summer: Howdy!**

**Erik: I ****would**** thank Broadway Geek, Zombina, Shadow Archer, Brooke Blue, and D. Dresari for reviewing. But I don't feel like it.**

**Summer: -to Erik- Once again,** **sorry dude**. **-to marvelously wonderful readers- Erik's just a lil' upset 'cause he happens to live in my basement which got flooded over last weekend due to all the crazy rains going on in America. He (and I) appreciate the reviews anyway though. Oh and D. Dresari, terribly sorry if I scared you when Brooke's other friend and I spoke with you over the phone. I know we were kinda creepy...**

**Erik: Summer doesn't own Phantom of the Opera, me, Christine, Raoul or anything else she doesn't own.**

**Summer: Here's chapter eleven...**

"...sunburn of doooom'"

I only took a second to regard Lola's comment with horror and rage. Said rage didn't even belong to me, but it was so overpowering...

we had to get out of here. By this point, it wasn't my worry for Lola endangering herself or anyone else that might find themselves in Erik's way that made me want nothing more than to be far away. It was his wish, and my own, for the pain to stop. It was that barely existent hope that, if we could be way from reminders, the memories that now haunted not only him but myself too, would go away.

I turned and flew out of the room, out of the house. Away from the reminders, but not from the pain. I went into a haze, my vision blurred and all sound was somehow blocked off, as if I were listening to it through earplugs. I didn't pay attention to where we were going or how we were getting there.

I stayed in this calming haze until I had cleared my mind of all the thoughts that were crowding it. I breathed deeply and regained awareness of our surroundings. We were still sprinting. It looked like we were a good two and a half blocks from the Andrews' house. Good.

Erik, however, had not yet come out of his own haze. Although he had mostly intense feelings rather than clear thoughts, his mind was on Lola. He wanted her dead. And badly, too.

I slowed to a jog. The whole mask-and-why-he-wore-it topic was one that I'd been making a conscious effort to avoid. Fortunately, up until now, it had worked. Unfortunately, it appeared that I would have to face it now. Or at least, as soon as he calmed down enough to let me talk to him.

I wanted to say something supportive, but the only thing I could come up with was something stupid like 'So you're not symmetrical, who cares?'

Of course, I never would have said a thing like that out loud. But since the words went through my mind, he heard them anyway. To this day, I remain positive that he was about to strangle me regardless of the fact that it was suicide. So I quickly seized control over our arms and hands.

I decided not to bother him until he was in a better mood. Which probably would take a while. I slowed down a little more (I was getting tired) but didn't stop running until we were, quite literally, up a tree.

We had run quite a ways. We had passed our house towards the end of our spirt and were now in a public park. Some, unoccupied part of my mind observed that across the street was the building in which theater camp had been held. The Wizard and I. I had been so new to this then...

We sat encircled in the arm-like branches of our tree as I waited patiently for him to simmer down. It took him an unexpectedly long time, by the time we were able to have a civilized conversation, the sun was setting, throwing brilliant shades of orange and pink across the Michigan sky.

'That was awkward,' I broke our silence by thinking, 'if Lola knew what had really happened right then, she would be sorry. She doesn't enjoy my pain and I know for a fact she doesn't enjoy yours either.' I thought of how devoted a phangirl she was.

'_Weather people mean to do the wrong things or not is of little significance. The wrong things are still done._'

That scared me a little. Over the course of the approximate month and a half we had spent with each other, I had almost managed to forget about his violent unforgiving-ness. I was suddenly very afraid for Lola... afraid for everybody. 'Look, don't hate your phangirls, they love you. And by that I don't mean they think of you as an interesting character. They love you.'

He tried relatively unsuccessfully to ignore that. The thing was, he didn't really believe me, he didn't think it was possible to love him (which is sad, really). But at the same time, he knew I wasn't lying, he would have been able to feel it if I was.

'_You should not have agreed to go in the first place._' He wasn't really mad at me. He was just pointing it out.

'True that,' I thought in agreement.

We sat in silence for a little while longer, long enough for the dimming sun to duck below the tops of the trees that lined the horizon. We knew she was there before we saw her, we sensed her presence.

"So the reason you're acting weird... has something to do with Phantom of the Opera?" Lola Andrew called up to us from the foot of the tree we were curled up in.

I waited a few seconds before acknowledging her presence. 'Aren't you going to make some sort of attempt on her life?'

'_Not at present. Perhaps later._' he had decided not to be violent which sent a wave of relief flooding over me. He knew that if he did anything terrible, I would be punished also. I don't think he wanted something bad to happen to me. Not just then, at least.

I heaved a sigh. "Yes, it has something to do with Phantom of the Opera." it would be easier to just tell her that than to have her bug us about it anymore. She'd never guess the truth anyway. I climbed down to stand in front of her.

She frowned a bit. "But I still don't know the reason."

Death glare. I would have given her one of my own, had I not known that Erik's was so much better.

She cringed. "I'm sorry, alright? I didn't think it was something you felt so strongly about. I tell you what, no more observations, but I'm still going to try and figure out what's going on with you. Okay?"

'What do you say, Compadre? Watching her try to nail us could be fun,' I thought. I was personally in favor of agreeing to her no-more-observations compromise.

'_Fine_.' Who says murderous Opera Ghosts can't be reasonable?

"Okay." I said in a flat voice, and then, as an after thought, added "leave Sandy alone though. She's got enough on her mind." I had considered telling her to leave Joe out of it too, but he could handle pretty much anything... and I owed Raoul nothing...

"Alright. Great!" she said happily and waited, smiling, for our response.

"Okay. I'd better get home. My mom was expecting me back about half an hour ago. And I think I have to baby-sit my sister tonight." we started trudging gloomily in the opposite direction. It would be a long walk, but we could get through it.

Just like this journey, this awkward stage. It would be long and hard, we knew. But it would all work out. It would be okay in the end...

... it had to be.

**Summer: I know that one was pretty short and basically nothing happened. But for the record, it was n't easy to write in any way shape or form.**

**Erik: flame and... well, you don't want to know. Just don't flame.**

**Summer: he means it. Flame and you'll regret it for eternity! I know, it's happened to me, take my word for it! Review and I will love you forever.**


	12. Of Cafeterias and Exploding Dairy

**Brooke: Hi. Summer's in hysterics, so Erik and I are taking over for now.**

**Summer: ERIK!!**

**Erik: -rubs temples- what is it?**

**Summer: Give me a hug!!**

**Erik: Fine. -hugs Summer- How many times has she done that now?**

**Brooke: -checks list- that was the thirty-second. Summer apologizes for the wait. Anything that reminds her of Phantom of the Opera makes her spazz out. So writing a story for it wasn't that easy for her.**

**...**

**Summer: -random outburst of sobbing-**

**Erik: See? Summer and Brooke own nothing.** **And now, without further ado...**

'_No observations? I wonder if that child even knows the definition of the word 'observations.''_ Erik thought angrily.

'I honestly have no idea. But there's really no possible way for me to be any happier about this than you are, so don't get mad at me.' was my strained thought in response.

It was now the Monday after we had made our agreement with Lola. She hadn't approached us on the topic of why-we-were-acting-weird again... but Phantom of the Opera seemed to be coincidently popping up places a lot more than usual. Now, for instance, we were at lunch and she (with the rest of the popular crowd) was sitting a few tables away, blasting the 2004 movie soundtrack on her ipod loud enough that the entire cafeteria could here it. We had been fine through the Overture and Think of Me, aside from being annoyed at her persistence. Now she was playing the song Down Once More. As I'm sure you can imagine, he did now react well.

We were sitting with Sam and Nora. But for all the attention we were giving them, we might as well have been sitting on the moon. Sam was being infinitely thoughtful and pretending to assume that our reason for strangling anything within reach (we were presently gripping a carton of milk) was cramps, when he knew perfectly well that it wasn't.

Nora was a different story. We usually spent as much time with her as possible seeing as she was the only person we knew that hadn't once asked us what was going on with us. But now, I could tell she was concerned for us.

"Beverly, seriously. What's wrong?" she asked for what seemed like the millionth time.

We didn't answer. I tightened our hold on the milk carton, it was better for him to get this insane urge to strangle something out of his system. The words that were printed on the carton probably weren't even legible by now, that's how much we were mangling it.

I was guessing the song was coming to an end because I could hear the Monkey Music Box Thingy playing.

"Is it the music?" Nora continued, "I thought you liked show tunes."

Again, we made no answer.

The song ended and they skipped the last song. Good, that was more than enough reminders for one day... or decade. We continued pulverizing the milk carton just in case; he hadn't really calmed down yet.

They started the song over. "Down once more the dungeons of my black despair..."

The milk carton exploded.

"Beverly!" Nora exclaimed. She looked sort of shocked, probably because she had known me to be a weakling without the strength or motivation to do that.

Sam's reaction was this: "Woah! Alright, that was weird..." the last part mumbled barely audibly. After a pause, he seemed to decide that he should probably know what was the matter with us because he said, "Are you okay? You seem a bit... tense... lately."

"Yeah, we're fine. Just angered by, uh, dairy products," I grumbled in reply.

Nora blinked. "We?"

I froze in the act of wiping milk off the front of our shirt. "I didn't say we!"

"Yeah, you did."

"Huh. I mis-spoke." she probably didn't believe me, my lying skills were no better than before despite the fact that I now practiced on a daily basis, even to my best friends. Sort of depressing, really.

Erik was already calming down enough to wish he hadn't virtually demolished the milk carton, so I doubted he was dangerous to either of them -he kind of liked Nora and found Sam 'amusing'. But I wanted to be alone anyway, or at least, as alone as it was possible to be.

'You wanna get out of here?' I asked hopefully. As always when I asked him questions, I already knew the answer (when there was an answer).

'_I would not object to a change of company_,' meaning he didn't want company at all, me included. I pretended not to know that. I knew he was tired of me and he knew I knew it, but he didn't say anything.

I picked up the tray of disgusting cafeteria food that remained completely untouched -even if we were hungry, the school lunches would still be too gross to eat- and got out of our seat. I mumbled something about having a headache to Sam and Nora and plodded over to a corner of the cafeteria that was uninhabited for the most part.

We flopped down at a table far enough away from the popular crowd that we almost couldn't hear the music. We then proceeded to sit in awkward silence until I made a doomed attempt at making a conversation (through thought, of course).

'So, you still think we should have seen the stage play with my dad? We wouldn't have anything to use as a stress ball there.'

I think that upset him a little. G/d, why did he have to be so easily offended? Dramatic fictional characters can never take a joke. I was about to dredge up some awkward apology when-

"Hey."

I jumped about five feet in the air. Neither of us had noticed the girl sitting there, which is saying a lot on Erik's part. Just out of habit, he started scanning her appearance to see if she posed any sort of threat. She was pale and sort of skinny with a cloud of dark blond hair that waved over her shoulders and in front of her right eye. I realized with some dread that she was a year above us in highschool and therefore had the right to torment us.

'How long has she been sitting there?'

'_Most likely longer than we have._'

"Uh... hi," I said stupidly.

"Hey," she repeated politely then, looking at our outfit said "Are you going somewhere nice after this?"

I looked down. I couldn't blame her for thinking that, Erik had chosen to dress us up in a white button-down shirt and a knee length, black skirt this morning.

"Wha? Oh. No, I just... yeah." I made a mental note to bang my head on something later, maybe that would help with this apparent stupid-responses streak. Then, I quickly made a mental note not to follow through with the first mental note because Erik would probably kill me if I did.

Another awkward silence.

"Protesting against dairy products?" she asked, noting the milk stains on our cloths and hair.

I let him scowl at her. It wasn't a full fledged death glare, she didn't deserve to be scarred that way. I thought with some amusement that, three months ago, I probably would have said that yes, I was and made up some elaborate story about a down-with-dairy foundation.

She frowned, looking a little taken aback. "That was a joke. You're supposed to laugh at it," she muttered and I realized that she had been sitting all alone. I wondered why. After all, I didn't have world record social skills but I at least had Sam and Nora.

"Right, sorry. Hey... is that a bruise?" I craned our neck to see around the lock of hair that covered the darkened spot around her eye. It looked really painful.

'Wonder how that happened,' I thought to Erik, not expecting a response and not getting one.

She blushed and mumbled, "More of a black eye, really," she must have sensed my curiosity because, after a pause, she added "My foster dad got a little... carried away."

'Woah, She's abused!' I thought and then regretted it, it was the sort of thing to say that was really annoyingly obvious.

'_Yes. Poor girl_,' he thought in a withdrawn sort of way. He really did feel for her, it always impressed me that he could sympathize with people when he'd been through so much worse.

'Yeah. Who is she anyway?'

'_Evony Gray. She lives six houses down from you._'

'Does she? Huh. I'd never noticed her before.'

'_She seems to make a point of keeping to her self._'

Yet another awkward silence. That was, what, the third in the past half hour? Presently, the bell rang and we all got up to catch our next classes. But not before I noticed Lola walking by our table with a book in her hand: Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux. This was going to take some getting used to.

**Summer: Better to have loved and lost, -sniffel- than never loved at all -more sobbing**-

**Erik: She's delirious.**

**Brooke: Why's she so depressed, again?**

**Erik: ****You**** let her read Susan Kay's Phantom.**

**Brooke: Wow. Did your life suck ****that**** much?**

**Erik: It will be if Summer keeps acting like this, which she will if people don't review. Flame and-**

**Summer: I'll cut myself!**

**...**

**Brooke: **Okay**, uh... You guys review while... we get Summer away from, uh... sharp objects.**


	13. Of Implosions And Horror Movies

**Summer: Guess what! I'm mot in hysterics anymore!**

**Erik: Brooke left after she was absolutely positive that Summer did not need therapy.**

**Summer: Guess what else. This is another multiple points of view chapter. Woah, don't look ****too**** happy. It makes Beverly jealous!**

**Erik: Special thanks to Broadway Geek, Zombina, Brooke Blue and Shadow Archer for reviewing. And to the rest of the world for not flaming. Summer does not own Phantom of the Opera or anything else she does not own.**

_**Evony Gray...**_

I spent the rest of that day trying not to be noticed. Not that I don't usually do that, I just don't usually try so hard. This black eye was bound to get people whispering and if anyone found out how it got there, my foster father would surely give me another one to match. Luckily, I nearly always wore my hair in front of my face so that provided a disguise that wouldn't raise suspicions. In fact, the only person who'd noticed my injury all day was that one girl...

I quite honestly had no idea who she was. Well, that's not necessarily true. I knew who she was (there were probably more rumors flying around the school about her than anyone else, poor kid), but I didn't know her. I kept my self occupied by trying to remember her name. I knew it started with a B and I was pretty sure there was an E somewhere in there too. Betsy? Bernadette? No, it was neither of those.

I had those thoughts going through my head as I walked to my locker while trying not to be noticed and cramming my backpack with textbooks while trying not to be noticed. It was when I was heading towards the doors while trying not to be noticed that I came across Lola Andrew.

"Hi," she said brightly. She was infinitely cheerful -that had always sort of scared me about her. I wondered absently which one of us was higher on the social scale. She was at the height of popularity, but she was only a freshman to my sophomore.

I looked down at her and nodded my response.

"So, I noticed you were talking to Beverly Redmond earlier," she continued, only a hint of seriousness showing in her face.

Beverly! That was it. I nodded again.

"Did she tell you anything?" her smile was almost gone now. I think it was because she was aware of how stalker-ish she sounded.

"Only that she isn't protesting against dairy products."

she frowned and cocked her head to the side. I had confused her. Oh well, I made no attempt to explain myself.

"Do you like Phantom of the Opera?" she asked after a pause.

I wondered if she was trying to get back at me by confusing me. If so, it worked. I was taken aback by her question but answered her anyway. "Yeah."

She hesitated before replying. "Good. I think Beverly would like it too. If you find yourself talking to her again... could you bring it up?"

I never got the chance to answer her because, just as I was deciding on a response, my cell phone rang. I quickly fished it out of the pocket of my jeans and snapped it open. "Hello...?"

"Evony Gray." I winced. My foster mother's cold, quiet warning tone was even scarier than her husband's mindless shriek of fury. It was when she said my name like that, that I missed my real family most.

"Yes?" I answered timidly. That seemed to just make her more angry.

"You. Are. Late." I couldn't tell, but it sounded like she was speaking to me through a mouthful of clenched teeth. Oh boy, now I was in for it.

"I'm sorry! my French teacher let us out late because... well I don't know why, but-"

"I don't care what your excuse is! Your father is not going to be happy with you..." I winced again, harder this time. He probably couldn't beat me up if I had a witness with me long enough for him to calm down.

"Mom, I'm gonna bring a friend home, okay?"

"Fine!" I don't think she really liked it when my foster dad abused me that much either. Surely not out of concern for me though, she just didn't want to get caught. That was my theory, anyway.

Now I was faced with another problem: who would be my witness? I didn't actually have any friends here. I figured if Lola insisted on talking to me, I might as well take a shot at inviting her over. It would be awkward but it still beat another black eye. But just as I turned to face her again, I found she was gone.

_**Lola Andrew...**_

As soon as she looked away from me to answer her phone, I knew it would be my one chance to get away. I speed-walked away as best I could with my stupid, heavy backpack weighing down on my shoulders. I felt so ashamed. Why had I done that anyway? Was I that desperate to know? No, I couldn't be. So why had I done it?

I'm not stuck up, you know. A lot of people think I am, but I'm not. I don't love myself, in fact, there have been times when I've hated myself. Like the previous Saturday for instance, I hadn't done anything, I was just trying to get the DVD player to work. How was I supposed to know Beverly would react that way? She'd never told me she would. Yet, somehow that look of pain on her face made me feel so guilty and I just... hated myself.

And now I was doing it again. And knowingly this time. Jeeze, what was wrong with me? Was I sadistic, or something? No, I was just so terribly curious. Darned curiosity, it was like some sort of curse. You couldn't think about anything else, you couldn't sleep at night, until you knew the answer. The fact that everyone refused to tell me anything didn't do me any good either.

I spotted Sandy and Joe a little ways ahead. It was like they were attached to each other lately, each one never leaving the other's side. Which meant neither of them were ever with me. I was the most popular freshman I knew and I was lonely! I walked faster until I fell into step beside them.

"Hi guys," I made sure to wear that bright, happy, completely fake smile when I talked to them. If people knew I wasn't one hundred percent happy with my life, they would think I was spoiled. That, by the way, is a cruel stereotype. Not all popular people are spoiled, just most of them. "Sandy, can you hang out today?"

She sighed sadly -she'd never done that before this summer and now she was doing it practically all the time. "Sorry Lola, I really don't feel like it today."

Of course. She never felt like it any day. I was beginning to wonder if their secret had something to do with me. Was that why she kept ignoring me? No, wait, avoiding me! I just barely kept my fake smile from faltering. "Okay then." I flounced away, trying not to look as hurt as I felt.

Popular people don't get hurt, they just smile and look pretty.

_**Beverly Redmond...**_

I frowned. 'Are you sure?'

'_Yes, I am positive._'

'Then, how come I've never noticed before?'

'_Because you're ignorant._'

I blew an annoying lock of hair out of our eyes. 'Thanks.' we were arguing, of course. We were always arguing of late. I wondered, if we disagreed strongly enough, if we would implode. Shudder. Right now, we were arguing about that girl at lunch. Evony Gray. I didn't see how she could live down the street from me without my ever having noticed her before. It appeared that he was winning this one though.

"Hey." I jumped five feet in the air again. She was standing next to us. We had just been walking home from the bus stop and she had apparently caught up to us.

"Man! Do you try to pop up out of nowhere, or does it just happen?"

She shrugged. "I live over there," she said pointing to a house with shabby curtains and tinted windows. Exactly six houses down from us.

Erik internally raised an eyebrow at me.

'I stand corrected,.' I thought in defeat.

"Can you come over for a little while?" she asked, almost begged hopefully. I frowned again. I didn't really know this girl and she didn't really know me.

We fell into step next to each other. We were both headed in the same direction anyway.

'Think Lola's recruited her?' I asked mentally.

He though for a second. '_I doubt it._'

She seemed to sense my curiosity (again -she must have had a gift for that) because she explained "My foster dad is mad at me, I think. I need a witness for a little while so he can calm down, with out, uh..."

"Oh," realization hit me hard. "Yeah, I can come. Just let me tell my mom first 'kay?"

She nodded gratefully, "alright."

By then we were in front of my house. I leaned in the front door long enough to see May scribbling on another addition sheet. "May, I'm gonna go to a friend's house for a little while, okay?"

She nodded her little blonde head with out looking up.

"If Mom asks where I am, could you tell her I'm at the Grays' house?"

She nodded again.

We stepped back outside. "And we're off," I announced. We fell into step again in the direction of her house.

When we got there, she slowly opened the door with the key that had been hanging on a key chain from her belt loop. Erik noticed her hand shaking slightly. We agreed wordlessly to stay there until we were positive she would be okay.

"Mom?" she called timidly, "I'm home." a lady in the next room (her foster mom I'm guessing) looked over her shoulder at us and nodded. I looked away awkwardly.

There was a man on the couch in the room we had just entered. He was watching some movie. Horror movie by the looks of it, on the screen a pretty girl was screaming bloody murder at I-didn't-know-what. The man (probably her foster dad) stood up when he saw her but caught sight of us and sat back down, glowering at us.

'Wow. His death glare can almost compete with yours!'

'_Almost_' I think Erik might have been some what amused under other circumstances. He was taking in our surroundings disapprovingly. I didn't blame him, it was a mess. There were DVD cases (more horror movies) piled everywhere and it looked like the place hadn't been dusted in years. The tinted windows made the room dim, despite the fact that it was a sunny September day.

'Kind of dark and spooky,' I commented after a while.

'_Perhaps there is a ghost._'

I almost did a double take, but caught myself. 'Was that a joke? Dude, are you feeling okay?'

Just as suddenly as his good humor had appeared, it was gone. He absolutely hated it when I called him 'dude.'

We stood awkwardly for a moment, none of us knowing what to say, before Evony seemed to come up with something to do. She started off in the direction of a doorway and motioned for us to follow her. We did, but not before giving her foster dad a death glare of our own.

Our death glare totally smashed his death glare!

**Summer: so that's it for chapter thirteen. Review and I will have I life debt to you.**

**Erik: Flame and I'll set my minions on you.**

**Summer: You have minions?**

**Erik: Yes. don't flame if you value your sanity.**


	14. Of Lightsabers And Sweeney Todd

**Summer: Get this, my story got put on this list thingy called ****Attack****of the Bad Fics****.** **Kinda funny... Erik?!**

**Erik: Yes?**

**Summer: I need a hug again!**

**Erik: -hugs Summer-** **will this be happening a lot?**

**Summer: Yes!**

**Erik: -mutters under breath- Summer owns nothing but a place on a list of bad fics. Special thanks to Zombina, Broadway Geek, Blue Flame and Fire Alchemest, Nutty Noir, Brooke Blue and Shadow Archer for reviewing. This chapter begins exactly where the last one (which was far too short) left off.**

Mr. Gray looked a little taken aback at Erik's glare of doom. He blinked a couple times and opened his mouth like he was about to say some thing, only to close it again looking confused. I had several things I would have greatly liked to say to him, but I didn't think any of them would make a very good impression. So I said the words on the tip of my tongue in my head.

'Yeah, that's what I thought, you abusive, fat-"

'_That's getting a bit carried away, don't you think?_' he thought, cutting me off before I could get to the more profane part of my speech.

I turned away so Evony's foster parents wouldn't see me smirk, 'Yeah, I guess so... you know you agree with me though.'

He didn't respond but had a few I-won't-respond-to-that-because-it's-really-stupid thoughts and started taking long strides to catch up with Evony before we lost site of her. She lead us down a stair case that didn't have any carpet so that you had to walk on the bare, squeaky wood.

'That would give some bad splinters in bare feet, huh?' I thought, looking down to make sure we didn't trip on the steep, crude steps.

'_Indeed..._' he was, yet again, not really paying attention to me. His mind was elsewhere.

'Hey, I know you'd enjoy pushing Mr. Gray off a building and I would too, but I don't think killing him is a good idea. Killing people can sort of get you in a little bit of trouble.'

'_Really. I never would have thought,_' he wasn't joking anymore, just using sarcasm. Again.

We reached the bottom of that annoying staircase and looked up to see Evony's basement. It was even more dark and spooky looking than the ground floor, it probably would have been completely dark if it weren't for the single naked lightbulb suspended from the center of the ceiling, casting a weak, yellow light over the room. The floor -unlike the steps- was covered in a carpet that was slightly moldy and so dirty neither of us had the slightest idea what color it had been when it had been bought. There was a small TV with a pair of antennas sticking out of the top like demented rabbit ears sitting on a shabby looking table in one corner that was untouched by all the shadows and unlit darkness.

Gray, I decided, was a fitting name for this family. Gray. Or Grey. That word could accurately describe virtually everything in this dungeon-like building. I wondered if Evony had always been grey. Had she once been a happy color like yellow? Or a sensible but sweet color like purple? For how long had she been infected by this miserable colorlessness?

She had flopped down looking tired on a shapeless couch (also grey. A dark and leathery shade) that lined one of the dank walls.

I realized, a little late, that this was another awkward silence. I clambered to find something to talk about. These silences seemed to attract to me like unwanted magnets.

"Um, you want to watch a movie?" she asked hesitantly. Apparently her search for a conversation-starter had been far more successful than mine.

Erik and I simultaneously remembered being asked the same question just a couple days ago. That hadn't gone over well.

'Ugh,' I thought, 'still, I think it would be okay if we watched something... erm... un-painful'

He nodded silently in agreement. Evony saw and took it as a 'yes' in answer to her question. "What do you want to see? We have pretty much every horror movie known to man. But I don't want to go back upstairs to get one for, uh, reasons that go without saying. So we're going to have to limit it to half the horror movies known to man."

"Anything is fine."

She frowned, seeming to remember she had to do something she didn't really feel like doing. I knew I'd worn the same expression several times when thinking about homework.

"How about Phantom of the Opera?"

"Anything is fine except that," I replied shortly and thought, 'Lola's trying to corrupt her. I can tell.'

'_Yes. However, she seems, for the time being, to remain uncorrupted._'

'Yeah. That's good. It'd be a shame if she crossed over to the dark side and we had to chop her limbs off with our lightsaber.'

'_Quite,_' he seemed moderately sickened.

'Remind me to show you the Starwars films some time.'

She looked at us apologetically, but mercifully didn't ask what our problem with Phantom was. "How about Sweeney Todd? Have you seen it yet?" she asked conversationally, getting up to search through another pile of DVD cases, supposedly looking for it.

"No. That's fine. What's it about?"

She paused, deciding how to phrase her answer before saying, "This dude that goes around killing people and singing show tunes."

I grinned and thought, 'that's right up your alley then, isn't it?'

That made him kind of mad. He explained my mistake to me with a deathly calm, '_I do not 'go around killing people' nor have I ever. I took the lives only of those who did not deserve them. Unfortunately, I knew far too few people deserving of life._'

That made me shudder. 'Um, okay. Sorry. Just, uh,pretend I never said that, okay?'

He nodded again.

Meanwhile, Evony seemed to have located the DVD she was looking for. She punched a few buttons and the small, square shaped screen came statically to life. She sat back down and picked up a remote, clicking 'play movie' on the disc menu.

We sat down next to her. "So, Andrew's trying to recruit you for her army of droids." I asked casually.

She smiled, "I think she's trying to."

"But you haven't crossed over to the dark side?"

She smiled wider, "Not yet. What kind of a jeddi would I be then?"

We both laughed. Even Erik seemed a little bit amused. Good, an amused Erik was better any day than an angry Erik.

Then, her smile faded until it was barely there and her eyes took on a sad, reminiscing look. "I like Starwars," she said quietly, "I saw those movies with my last family, no, second to last. They were one of the nice ones."

And out of nowhere, we were drowning in yet another awkward silence. I didn't even try to swim my way out of it. None of us were paying any attention to the movie anymore, if we ever had been.

I waited about a minute for her to continue. When she didn't I looked back at the movie screen, pretending to be absorbed in it. She surprised me by whispering, "They died in a house fire." We looked back at her. She still looked sad. She stared into thin air as if she could see her old family smiling back at her, but she knew she couldn't reach out and touch them. Her voice was thick with grief but she wasn't crying. I got the feeling it must take a lot to make her cry.

"Sorry," I whispered, just as quietly.

She nodded. "I miss them."

We nodded too, unable to think of a better response. For the next hour or so, we each pretended to watch the movie, occupied with our own personal thoughts -and in the cases of Erik and I, occupied with each other's thoughts.

'One of the nice ones? Do you think she means most of them were, er, un-nice?' I thought, feeling guilty for being nosey.

'_I do not doubt it._'

'How many families do you think she's been with?'

'_I do not know. I would guess it to be quite a lot._'

'That must suck.'

He agreed without comment and gave me the usual jab for present day language.

After a while, Evony paused the movie, using the remote that was still clutched in her hand. "Do you want to watch something else?" she asked, "It seems like you're not really into this one."

I shook our head, "No, the movie's fine. I guess I'm just not in a movie-watching mood."

She nodded muttering, "Me either."

"Evony!" a kid's voice called from the floor above us, "Mom says to come up here. Her and Dad want to talk to you," it sounded like a boy, but I wasn't sure because his (or her) voice hadn't deepened yet. If he was a boy, he couldn't have been over ten. We guessed him to be her younger brother -or foster brother.

She looked at us for a second before going "Stay here, okay?" and striding reluctantly in the direction of the stairs leading up. I felt suddenly worried about her, and not just because the stairs could give her splinters.

"Uh, will you be-" I started to ask, concerned.

"Oh, I'll be fine. He won't do anything as long as your in the house. Just stay down here though. Okay?" she said, cutting me off.

I was too occupied with worry to answer -if my own concern wasn't enough, I had to feel Erik's too. So he nodded for me. She smiled half-heartedly and made her way up the stairs, leaving us to ponder what was about to happen to her.

'Think she'll be alright, Compadre?' I thought, staring after her, up the rough staircase.

'_I would hope so,_' was all he said in response.

We heard shouting from up on the ground floor in the form of a man's voice. I winced and he got another one of those ever-so-charming urges to strangle Mr. Gray or, at least, kill him in some other satisfying form.

'Why do you think it is that that guy isn't in prison yet?'

'_Perhaps because he had never been reported._'

'So why doesn't anyone report him? Evony's got the proof of his abuse all over her face.'

He gave an I-can't-believe-you-don't-know-the-answer-to-that-because-it's-so-obvious type sigh, thinking, '_She doesn't report her father because he is afraid of what he will do to her if she does._'

'...Oh. Hadn't thought of that.' We went on like that, with me asking stupid questions and him answering them (which surprised me), for quite a while, until presently, when Evony came stepping carefully back down the steps. We both immediately started scanning her face for any new bruises. Not finding any, I asked "You okay?"

"Yeah, I'm fine. Just like I said I would be," she replied, grinning at that last part. We nodded again, not expecting any response from her.

"It's just... they're not my family," she surprised us by saying, "they don't love me and they don't pretend to. It... feels like... I don't know, it feels like no one loves me. It sucks."

"_That it does,_" Erik said sympathetically. Out loud. In front of an actual person. Who could hear us. Out loud.

I knew our cover was pretty much blown by then, so I said my bit out loud to. "Gah! First May, now..." I sputtered spastically for a moment, "G/d I thought we were going to make a decent attempt at keeping this a secret."

Evony raised her eyebrows, skeptically surprised.

"Excuse me while I rant to my fictional other self," I said to her before continuing to sputter. "If you want every one to know so desperately, let's put it in the news paper. Heck, lets put it on TV!"

"_You know perfectly well that is not what I want,_" he responded calmly, this also out loud. He seemed completely undaunted by my maniacal fury.

"Then, why did you tell her?"

"_I did no such thing._"

"Well, you might as well have!"

"Um..." Evony finally said tentatively, cutting off our debate. We looked over at her again. Her eyebrows were arched in a question.

I sighed. It was no use trying to cover it up now. "My body is inhabited by the dead spirit of the Phantom of the Opera," I told her matter-of-factly.

She was still looking skeptical.

"You want his death glare as proof?" I asked, folding our arms over our chest.

"Er, no. I decidedly believe you," she said slowly. It looked like she really did.

"_I am glad,_" Erik said, not wanting to give an innocent soul like her his death glare.

I grinned saying, "Yeah, me too," agreeably, before adding "That was Beverly."

"Huh," she said thoughtfully, "I never would have guessed that," then she smirked, "Phantom, highschool must be terrible for you!"

"Yeah," I agreed and then said as an afterthought, "He likes it when you call him by his name."

She raised her eyebrows again.

"_Erik,_" he added, explanatorily.

She nodded and then said, "So if you guys can tell me, why don't you tell Lola? She'd stop bugging you."

"Huh. I hadn't thought of that," I said, considering it, "What do you think, Compadre?"

"_I am, by now, beyond caring,_" he replied somberly.

I shrugged and took out my cell phone, flipping it open. I opened up my contact list and clicked on Lola's name, a number I had rarely called.

"Hello?" her familiar voiced answered.

"Hey. It's Beverly. So what are you doing this Friday after school?"

**Summer: Hehe! That was the longest chapter since chapter two. sorry again for the wait!! I've decided that anything shorter than five pages is unacceptably short, so they might take a little longer. But they'll be better chapters, right?**

**Erik: Review and Summer will do her happy dance. Flame and Summer will force you to ****watch**** her happy dance -not a pleasant experience, trust me.**


	15. Of Cookies And News Papers

**Summer: Howdy! I have nothing better to do and simply adore all my marvelous readers/reviewers, so I decided to start working on chappie fifteen!**

**Erik: In other words, she has no life.**

**Summer: Yep! Special thanks to Shadow Archer, Broadway Geek, Brooke Blue and Belle for reviewing.**

**Erik: Summer likes to fantasize that she owns Phantom of the Opera but knows perfectly well that she does not.**

**Summer: Fun sucker!**

_**Lola Andrew...**_

When I reached home, I was too tired to keep up that bouncy smile that I usually try to make a habit of wearing. That was okay, my mom knew it was fake anyway. It wasn't just the weight of my homework that was dragging me down, it was the weight of the entire day. I was taking the Phantom thing way too far and I knew it. I'd told myself what a bad person I was a million times and I still couldn't get rid of that ravenous urge to know what was going on.

I unhooked my key chain (and with it my key, of course) from the belt loop of my skinny jeans and unlocked the door. Before I could even open it, my mom had. She stood in the doorway saying, "Hi, Lo. Good day at school?"

I walked inside my familiar home and dropped my backpack in a random spot on the thickly carpeted floor. "Yeah, it was fine," I lied, thinking G/d only knew when and why she had started calling me 'Lo.'

"How much homework do you have?" she asked, cutting all the motherly welcome-home stuff.

"Too much. Just like yesterday and the day before. And the day before that." I responded, trudging into the kitchen. I stood on my toes in order to open one of the higher cabinets and grabbed a tray of cookies covered in green plastic wrap so they wouldn't go stale. They had been put in that cabinet specifically so I couldn't get them, but I had been tall enough to reach it for years.

I grabbed about five or six of the homemade cookies and replaced the tray. I took one bite and savored it -my mom made the best cookies in the whole of humanity. Then, still munching, I made my way into the TV room where I had dropped my backpack. Finishing the first cookie, I picked up my backpack and opened it. Then, put it back down again. I had plenty of time, I would just do my homework later. Probably not the wisest choice I'd ever made, but it wasn't like it would kill me or anything.

I started on my second cookie as I turned on the DVD player. We had gotten it fixed yesterday. I pondered what to watch for a few seconds before deciding to see what was already in the player. Phantom of the Opera. Oh, yeah.

I put down the cookie, having lost my appetite.

I miserably took the disc out of the machine and put it carefully back in its case, which was sitting next to me on the thickly carpeted floor. I closed the case and stared at it for a moment. Gerard Butler absolutely made the best Phantom ever! As far as I had seen anyway... But Gerard just captured his personality so well. It probably wasn't easy to play the Phantom, he had to be so sad and mysterious and just all-around Phantomish.

Thinking about Phantom brought me back around to the thought of Beverly again. Why was it so important to her anyway? Was she just some kind of really crazy phangirl or something? Jeeze, and I'd thought I was obsessive. I thought about it hard. Maybe I would guess right.

"Honey, have you started your homework yet?" my mom called from her bedroom, one story above me.

"No. I just got home," I shouted in reply.

She hesitated for a moment. "Sweetie, it's 5:05."

I raised an eyebrow even though I knew she couldn't see it. There was no possible way it had been that long, but I glanced at my digital wrist watch, just to be sure.

I probably jumped a foot in the air. I had been reflecting on the whole Beverly Phantom Situation for an hour and a half!

I muttered the first swear word that came to mind under my breath and lugged my backpack up to my room. I swear, getting that thing up the stairs was the most difficult task I'd ever accomplished.

'Get over it,' I told myself, 'It's just a backpack, you wimp.'

Before I had discovered how useful my fake smile could be, people had often told me I was too hard on myself. Not too persistently, of course. They were all paying more attention to Beverly and I didn't blame them, that had been back in the year when she was anorexic. I could remember with startling clarity how she would say "Man! There's a difference between starving and dieting. Give it a rest!" whenever someone tried to get her to eat.

So she had always been somewhat stubborn. I wondered if that had something to do with it...

I jumped again as my cell phone rang from inside my backpack. My ring tone was the Overture to Phantom of the Opera. That was ironic. I took the slim shiny phone out of its pocket and held it, letting it ring for a moment.

I was insane, but not insane enough to talk to a phone. But if I was, I would have begged -literally begged- it to be Sandy calling, saying that she could hang out today after all. I wanted her to say that every single thing that had happened since that one weird afternoon when I had been at her house with her and Beverly was a joke. I wanted her to tell me none of it had been serious, it hadn't really happened. I wanted her to say that so badly.

I was too afraid to look at the caller ID as I shakily flipped the phone open while thinking what I wreck I had been reduced to. Afraid to open a phone! I closed my eyes and made one final prayer that it would be Sandy's clear voice on the other end before answering.

"Hello?"

"Hey. It's Beverly. So, what are you doing this Friday after school?" Beverly's deep voice said from the other line. Well, that was okay, wasn't it? After all, she could tell me the whole thing had all been a joke too. Couldn't she?

Or... she could tell me it was happening. But she could tell me why it was happening. As I voiced that hope, I tried to make my self sound sarcastic. A joke. "Planning on telling me something?"

When she replied, she sounded quite serious, "Yes. If it'll get you to stop bugging me, then definitely."

"Really? Cool." I was a little shocked. She'd been obstinately trying to keep whatever secret she had from me for so long. And now she was just telling me? All of a sudden? Oh, well. I wasn't about to question her doing what I'd been trying to get her to do for so long. Well, I guessed it had only been about a week really, but still...

"What about Friday, are you free?" she persisted.

Realization and memory crashed down on me. I'd been so excited I'd forgotten. I wasn't free that Friday. I was about to ask her if any other date was okay, but I was too afraid to push my luck. What if the slightest resemblance of resistance made her change her mind?

I hesitated for a few agonizing seconds, trying to decide what to do before saying, "Actually, I think I'm going to a Halloween party or something with my family this Friday. I'm really sorry, I..."

"Don't worry about it," she said, cutting me off before I could start what probably would have turned into a long and spastic rant, "I'll see if I can find some other day. Can I call you back?"

I nodded gratefully. Then, realizing she wouldn't be able to see me, I said, "Yes. Thanks. I really appreciate it."

"Yeah, sure," she said, "and see if its okay with Sandy and Joe, will you? Ask if they can come too."

I said I would and hung up. I sat there for a moment, staring into space. Then, a huge, ecstatic, real smile spread over my face. I was so happy, I felt like I was willing to do anything in the world. Which I proved by reaching down for my backpack and starting my homework.

_**Beverly Redmond...**_

I glanced and a clock propped up against the wall. It said it was 7:45 AM. I somehow doubted that. "Evony, do you have a watch on you? That was Beverly." I said. We had been in theh middle of explaining everything we knew about the situation.

"Yeah, it's 5:30. But I still don't get how Erik got here," she confessed, checking the digital wristwatch on her arm.

"_I don't believe either Miss Redmond or myself have can say any reason for sure,_" Erik said thoughtfully.

"That was Erik," I said for him (I was always the one who said which one of us was talking), "and if you don't speak the unique language of Opera Ghost, that means neither of us has any idea."

He scowled at thin air. Probably meant for me.

"Um, okay. Hey, you know it's getting kind of late," she commented, "think you guys should be getting home?"

"Yeah, probably," I said with Erik in silent agreement.

She lead us back up those darn obnoxious stairs and into the first (and one of the only) rooms we'd seen of the house. Her foster dad was still sitting there on the couch, reading a news paper that looked like it was at least twenty years old which was probably just from the ill light in the room making it appear to be yellowish.

Her foster mother was still doing something in the neighboring room -it looked like it was supposed to be the kitchen but it was so cluttered we couldn't really tell. Without turning to look at her daughter, she said "Evony, will you come in here? I need to talk to you about something."

Evony nodded and started making her way towards Mrs. Gray over the piles of horror movies (most of which looked quite gory and frightening). We were about to head out the door when she turned around. "Uh, Beverly," she said, "I need to ask you something about school. Homework. Don't leave until I come back, okay?"

"Um, yeah. Sure," I said reluctantly, I wanted to leave. I was fine with Evony, I even like her. But I just hated being in this house. As soon as you walked in you felt an air of unwelcomeness, as if you were meddling in something too big to handle alone, because you were alone, no matter who was with you. And whatever you were meddling in didn't want to be meddled with. I shifted awkwardly.

'What do you think she wants to ask about?' I thought, in a doomed attempt to fill the crushing silence.

'_She already told you. An assignment,_' he answered. He was apparently immune to the atmosphere in this house. If I had asked him about it, he probably would have told me he was used to unwelcomeness. My poor depressed compadre.

"So, you're Evony's new friend?" Mr. Gray said, lowering his newspaper and startling me to an embarrassing extent. He looked us over again, this time with narrowed black eyes. Perhaps they were brown, but either way, they were very dark.

"Mm-hm," I murmured, pursing our lips and not meeting his unreadable gaze.

"Why?" he asked, seemingly curious. Well, that had me baffled. I rifled through Erik's thoughts (much to his annoyance) trying to see if he knew what Mr. Gray was getting at. His guess, surprisingly, was as good as mine.

"You mean why am I her new friend?" I asked tentatively.

"Yeah," he grunted, returning his attention to his newspaper while continuing to talk to us, "I mean, not the brightest girl, her."

I would have frowned had Erik not done so already. I had known Mr. Gray had no sentimental bond with his daughter, but... hearing her speak of his distaste for her was not the same as witnessing it in person. At least he wasn't hurting her right now. But it still made both of us uneasy. For G/d sake, she was his daughter!

"And not the best looker, either," Gray went on, completely oblivious to our reaction to him voicing his opinions, "I suppose that's from her mom. Her real mom, I mean," he smirked at the word real.

Erik was picturing Evony's foster dad dead, it was apparently giving him a dark sort of satisfaction. As much as that crept me out, I wouldn't have minded strangling Gray just then either. I recited every swear word I knew in my head and Erik didn't even tell me off for it, he had similar opinions about this man.

He continued talking. "In fact, she's virtually useless. But," he gave us this infuriating grin, "if you want to hang out with her, you're only wasting your own time, I guess."

I wanted to slap him. Erik wanted to kill him. We could sufficiently compromise by slapping him then killing him. But the thought of a juvenile delinquent center didn't exactly have us jumping for joy and killing him wouldn't have us on the court's good side. So we wouldn't kill him. But there was no way we would get arrested for slapping him.

So I did.

**Summer**: **If you want to make a little girl reeeaally** **happy, you can vote on my poll. Not that I'm trying to persuade you to or anything... vote please?**

**Erik: Review and Summer will remain 'sane' for another week or so.**

**Summer: Flame and I'll send all my dangerous fictional homeboys to hunt you down and annoy you. Believe me, they can be quite lethally annoying.**


	16. Of Math Homework And Inside Jokes

**Summer: Uh... -looks down guiltily- hi everybody.**

**Erik: Summer feels infinitely sorry that the wait's been so long and would like to offer you her groveling, heartfelt apology.**

**Summer: I'm sorry!! Im such a terrible person... -sniffle- I deserve to involuntarily make out with Raoul for six full seconds!**

**Erik: Summer**, **no one, not even Raoul ****himself**** deserves to make out with Raoul.**

**Summer: You are ****such**** a good person.**

**Erik: Okay... I'll just do the disclaimer and then get in touch with that psychiatrist we found for you.**

**Summer: No! Not therapy, ****please**** not therapy!**

**Erik: Summer does not own Phantom of the Opera, anything else she mentions that happens to be copy-righted, or, as of now, an ounce of sanity.** **Special thanks to Belle, Blue Flame and Fire Alchemist, Zombina, Shadow Archer, Broadway Geek and Astrophysics Rock for reviewing.**

_**Nora Weston...**_

"Thank you, Nora," May chimed happily as she finished the math homework I'd been helping her with. I smirked as I mentally compared her easy fraction worksheet to the pages upon pages of math homework that Sam and I had been getting in our advanced math class. Her assignment was so different from ours that it was surprising they could both be labeled under 'math homework.'

"No problem. I didn't have anything better to do anyway," I replied, nearly failing to keep a hint of bitterness out of my voice. Normally, I like to consider myself a pretty cheerful person, I had a great family, a great home and great friends. Well, it was the great friends thing I wasn't so sure of just then. That was what had me feeling less than cheerful: Beverly. One week, she had been funny, nice and accepting, the next, she had been serious and always worried about who-knew-what. That's why I was at her house now, I had made plans with her, just to make sure she wasn't trying to get rid of me with her sudden strange behavior. I sighed as a small part of me admitted if she wanted me to stop hanging around her, I would back off.

Anyway, we had made plans for me to come to her house today. Only she wasn't there. May, sensing something wrong, had apologetically explained that she was at a friend's house, she didn't know whose. We had tried her cell phone but it was dead. We had called all her other friends but they all said she wasn't with them -we got a particularly shaken answer from Sandy Hall and an angry, yet somehow amused at the same time, tone from Joe White, who I knew for a fact she had a crush on.

And that was another thing, her crush on Joe. It just made life that much harder for Sam. I'd more than once asked the poor guy what he saw in Beverly and he had miserably responded that he didn't know. She knew he liked her and she pretended not to know. Didn't she know that just made it more difficult for both of them? I'd tried to confront her about it once and she'd said she had a lot on her mind with highschool starting and walked away from me before I could tell her that was the crappiest excuse I'd heard since when I was ten and my mom had told me we couldn't go to the movies because she was allergic to the film. I mean, come on, highschool was starting for all of us.

So here I was, without her in her own house but refusing to leave until I had talked to her. If she wanted me to stop hanging out with her I would. If she wanted me to help her through whatever was happening to her, I would do that to. But I would not allow her to keep ignoring Sam.

Her mother gave me yet another apologetic glance. "I'm sorry again, Nora. I'm sure she didn't abandon you on purpose, she probably just forgot."

"I know," I murmured honestly. Beverly forgetting she had plans with me seemed oddly... normal for her. I had never thought her acting the way she did most of the time would have me disconcerted. But it did now. Funny how unpredictable life could be.

As though she had known she was being thought about, Beverly chose that moment to enter the scene. We all looked up when we heard the three short wraps on the front door. Her grand entrance was unexpected, I'd give her that much.

Mrs. Redmond opened the door for a very flustered-looking Mr. Gray. His fist was big enough to be rapped all the way around Beverly's upper arm and so it was. His face was red and he sputtered angrily. I'd heard rumors about this guy and, from what I'd been told, he didn't exactly seem like a perfect gentleman.

Beverly, although appearing to have the circulation in her arm cut off, was smirking. She looked very satisfied and pleased with herself. I wondered what she'd done.

She caught my eye and smiled, waving the hand that Gray didn't have in a strangle hold.

I smirked, waving back.

_**Beverly Redmond...**_

"Why Hello, Lady Weston," I said, making my best attempt at a mock bow. I didn't get very far with that, considering Gray was still gripping our arm.

Nora touched her forehead lightly as if tipping an invisible hat to us. "Lady Redmond," she acknowledged.

I dared a glance at my mom. She had her hands on her hips and was glowering like I'd never seen her do before. I think it was her own death glare. I looked guiltily down at our feet.

'Now we're in for it,' I thought, although I was still pretty happy with my accomplishment, if that was the right word for it.

Erik inwardly raised an eyebrow.

'Okay, now I'm in for it. Totally worth it though, right?'

'_It was an act of childish impulse on your part. And yes, it was worth it._'

Before I could grin at that, my mom opened her mouth to speak. I braced myself for the telling off of my life.

"Mike Gray, take your hands off my daughter," she said evenly. She looked really angry, for a second I thought she might bite his head off or something. Unfortunately, his head remained firmly in tact. What a shame.

I almost laughed.

"Fine then," he growled, "take your bloody violent kid back And don't ever let me catch her in my sight again!" he gave our arm one final squeeze and let go of us so abruptly that we stumbled. We gave him a last death glare as he lumbered back in the direction of his house.

I looked at our arm. There were wide pink welds where his fingers had been and think red lines where his nails had bit into our skin.

'Oh wow, he damaged us,' I thought, still only a bit angry.

'_That he did. He could have done worse, however_,' Erik was always so charmingly optimistic.

My mom turned her gaze on us. "What did you do?"

"Huh? Oh, I slapped him across the face," I replied conversationally.

Nora raised her eyebrows, still smiling, and asked "Why exactly? Or were you just going around slapping people for no apparent reason again?" I knew the 'slapping people for no apparent reason' was an inside joke I had with her, but I couldn't remember what it was from to save my own life.

"Did you guys know he abuses his daughter?" I inquired in response.

Nora nodded and my mom said, "everyone's heard one or two rumors about that but none seem to know for sure. Did he do anything to you I can press charges against?"

I looked at the red blotches on our arm again and thought, 'do you think so?'

'_Unfortunately not._'he clearly would have loved to see the man behind bars anyway though.

I figured he was probably right. " I'm afraid not," I answered out loud.

"Beverly, can I talk to you?" Nora asked, before my mom could respond.

"Yeah," I said, then added as an after thought, "Oh, we had plans today! I'm so sorry." I had forgotten all about that. I would have smacked myself on the forehead if that didn't mean smacking Erik too (for no apparent reason, I thought with a smile).

Speaking of whom, he was not terribly pleased with me.

'I'm sorry, okay. I forgot,' I defended myself, 'Normally you remind me of stuff like that.'

'_Normally__, people make own decisions as to which friend to abandon and which to follow. It is purely your responsibility to remember the plans you, yourself have made._'

The first part made me shudder a little as I silently wondered what tragic story lay behind that sentence. The second part though, I couldn't help but agree with. I sighed, thinking 'True that,' and said "Sure, Nora. What did you want to talk about?"

"Come on, I'll tell you," she replied, pulling me into the next room. She seemed to be refusing to say anything in front of my mom and sister. That couldn't mean she wanted to discuss our homework. I barely managed to stifle a groan.

When we had reached my bedroom and had the door firmly shut, she turned to me and said one word. "Sam." she glared at me, knowing I would immediately catch her drift.

"Oh. That," I mumbled.

She gave me another short word. "Why?"

I took a deep breath. "I don't know I just... it's hard to explain. I don't want to disappoint him. I guess I'm like... scared he won't want to be friends anymore if we don't end up going out or something," I stammered. This was difficult to talk about, it didn't help either that Erik completely sided with her.

"So you pretend no to notice him. Brilliant," her icy tone had me a little taken aback. She'd only ever been light hearted and funny with me before. It occurred to me that this whole affair could affect my friendship with her too. She was right though, I had been paying too little attention to both of them. It was just that I had so many people on my mind right now. One of them was even in my mind.

Not being able to come up with any sort of acceptable response, I looked away glumly and nodded, muttering, "sorry."

"I just don't get why you're doing this, Beverly," Nora's voice had softened noticeably, "I understand if you don't want to be more than friends with Sam, but you should at least talk to him about it. Or talk to him at all. He's a nice guy, he'll understand," she paused, "I'd thought you would know that." she took another pause, this one much longer, "And he only ever forgives you."

I had absolutely no idea how to respond to that. Erik was no help, he'd supposedly decided I needed to get myself out of this one on my own. He was probably right, anyway.

Nora looked at the clock and sighed. She shook her head, making her long black hair swing over her shoulders. "It's late. I have to go home and get my homework done."

She had a lot of homework, she was in and advanced math thing ...with Sam. I nodded again silently. It seemed like the millionth time I'd done that today. It probably was too.

She brightened a little, "walk me home? I want to show you the new addition we just got on my house." there was still the smallest fleck of hostility in her voice though.

"Okay," I said quietly.

We walked to her house in awkward silence.

'How many awkward silences have we had today? We must have broken a world record or something.'

'_I do not keep track of silences. I am far more accustomed to them than you are._'

Another awkward silence. Great.

When we got to Nora's house, she said, "Will you please just talk to him about it tomorrow? You can't avoid the topic forever."

"I- I don't know."

She let out a huffy breath and walked away from us, she seemed angry at me again. I noticed, completely randomly, how cold it was outside. That was odd. Summer had just ended hadn't it? I didn't want winter to be here for a while. Or ever.

Before she disappeared through the front door of her newly refinished house, she called back over her shoulder, "let me know when you decide whether to take pity on him or rip his heart out."

I stood there long after we should have been starting the walk home, no longer caring about the cold. Some distant, widely ignored corner in the back of my mind alerted me that she had never said something so serious to me before. Most of me was reeling with sudden unexpected guilt. Rip his heart out? She didn't mean that. She couldn't. Could she?

'_Yes, she certainly can._'

I groaned as we began the short walk back to my house. When I pictured Sam, all I saw in my mind's eye was his contagious laugh and his sand-colored hair. And my own affection for him that couldn't have been stronger if he was my brother.

Because that was all I saw him as: a brother. He couldn't be anymore than that. I wasn't ready for him to be.

**Summer: Well, now I've had my therapy and I'm very scarred but all better. Oh, guess what I did over the weekend! I bought this adorable plastic bear thing, and the instructions on the box it came in say it's going to grow seven feet tall** **and eat my head! I also went to a ballet. There was this blond lady singing and I was thinking how the Christine in the original book was blonde. So I made the singing lady Christine and I picked out this one really good ballet girl to be Meg. I actually scared myself quite a bit considering I happened to be seated in Box Five...**

**Erik: Flame and I'll lock you in a room with Summer's therapist, ****then**** Punjab you. Reviews are much appreciated.**

**Summer: Yeah, let me know if I went way overboard with the drama on this one. I get the feeling AS is turning into a soap opera.**


	17. Of Gigling Blondes And SelfConsciousness

**Summer: Guess what! I just had a report card conference with my mom and one of my teachers.**

**Erik: Wow, and you're still alive?**

**Summer: As far as I can tell... Not only that, but** **I got -dramatic pause- straight A's!! -revels in GoodGradedness**

**Erik: Special thanks to Brooke Blue, Belle, Blue Flame and Fire Alchemist, Sampson, Astrophysics Rock, and Twilight Girl for reviewing.**

**Summer: Sorry, once again, for another ridiculously long** **wait. I deserve to hang my head in shame while still reveling in my good grades.**

**Erik: Summer doesn't own Phantom of the Opera, no matter how much she wishes she does.**

**Summer: Yep. If I owned it, Raoul** **would be a cat.**

'Have I ever told you I hate school days? All six of them,' I thought as we climbed the steep steps onto the morning bus. It was the day after our adventures with Lady Weston, Sweeney Todd, and the most charming members of the Gray family.

'_Your school week includes only five days_.'

'Oh. Right... I knew that.'

'_I'm sure_.'

I spotted an empty seat towards the back of the crowded bus (which was some how too stuffy, even on the coldest day of October) and started to make my way towards it. We elbowed past a few people and then caught a glance from Nora, sitting next to Evony.

'That's cool. I bet they'll be good friends.'

'_Undauntedly,_' some junior guy pushed past us, almost knocking us down, '_Now sit down before somebody kills you._'

Ooh, was that concern I detected? For my own well-being? How flattering. Knowing I was one of the few people whose safety he held some value for (if very little) made me, somehow, uneasy. Maybe it was because what happened to me, happened to him. Yeah, that was probably it. Just to confirm my theory, I responded with, 'Wouldn't that mean you're killed too?'

'_No, it would not._'

'Okay... that doesn't creep me out.' I shrugged the matter off, deciding to think about if and when there was a time when he was asleep while I wasn't. Then, I scratched that thought out, reminding myself that whatever time I was awake and he wasn't, I would spend ogling at Joe.

I looked back at Nora. She raised an eyebrow in a sort of warning.

'That doesn't creep me out either...' I thought, quite crept out. Well, succumbing to her request wouldn't be torture. Not all of the request, anyway. I had no problem with talking to Sam. My problem was with talking about that.

I backed up a couple seats - which wasn't easy considering how the flow of people was pressing us in the opposite direction- and collapsed next to Sam. He glanced up and smiled upon seeing us. Then, he went back to the book he had been buried in a second ago.

"What are you reading?" I asked curiously, trying to see the front cover of the thick volume in his lap.

"The Phantom of the Opera."

I gawked at him. "Seriously, You too? You've become one of them!"

He laughed that annoyingly charming contagious laugh of his and said, "No, I'm kidding. I haven't read Phantom yet. Although I might start when I finish this one, just to see why it's bugging you so much."

"That was cruel."

He only smiled and turned back to his novel.

"What are you really reading?" I asked. I felt sort of rude for not letting him read in peace, but I was scared of what Nora would do to me if she didn't see us talking...

"The Fellowship of the Ring."

I smirked. That was his answer about half the time I asked him what he was reading. "How many times have you read that now?"

"This will be my fifth."

"Crap."

"What?"

"I've only read it twice," I had no idea why I'd been so reluctant to talk to him. I'd completely forgotten how easy a conversation with him was. Sam was one of those people who it was impossible to have an awkward experience with- which was a constant life saver on my part.

He laughed again. "We have no lives. Either of us," he reminded me.

"Yes, but that's what makes us cool."

We went on like that for the rest of the bus ride. Discussing our no-life-ness and novels we'd each read, with Erik correcting stupid mistakes I made (none of them any more dignified than forgetting how many days were in my school week) in my head.

This is just for the record, but having a conversation out loud with one person, and another conversation in your mind with another person, is horrifically confusing. I was severely worried my brain would explode from disconcertion -stranger things have happened. Do the world a favor and don't try it if you don't have to.

When we got to school, I shrugged off the wave of dread that I always got when I knew for certain that I would have to be in the same room as my French class teacher within ten minutes. Then, I said bye to Sam and told him I would see him in gym later that day -another subject I sucked at.

XXX

Three and a half hours later, we stalked into the cafeteria carrying a notebook, textbook and pencil. I was planning to finish the math homework due later today during our lunch period. Erik was, of course, not happy about my not having finished it.

'Well, it's not like you need us to eat anyway. If it was up to you, we would only eat once every two days,' I thought defensively, as he began yet another telling off.

'_If your memories serve correctly, that was the same dietary schedule you restricted yourself to, two years ago_.'

'That's different.'

'_How so?_'

'I was annorex- uh, self-conscious. I was self conscious.'

Lola walked by us, giggling. She was, as usual, in the middle of a blob of similarly giggling girls (sometimes I wondered whether there was ever something funny, or they were just giggling to maintain the image). In fact, the only way I was able to spot her through the crowd surrounding her, was distinguishing her spray of light brown hair in the sea of blonde.

'Oh, we still have to talk to her,' I reminded him needlessly.

'_I take it, then,_ _that you still think contacting her is wise?_'

'Well, our options are either to tell her at least part of what's been going on since August, or to let her keep harassing you and therefore, at the same time, harassing me. It's tell the truth or get harassed. You decide.'

He sighed, inwardly accepting my idea, but saying nothing.

'Okay, then.'

We followed Lola to a table that she and her blob of giggling friends had apparently chosen to inhabit. They all sat down in a fluff of puffy skirts and blonde ponytails. I couldn't help noticing (although I wished I hadn't) that Sandy's honey-colored plait was normally added to the group. She and her own compadre seemed to be spending more and more time alone of late and I couldn't seem to shake the feeling that it was my fault. Presently, they were sitting with Joe. Joe/Raoul. They were holding hands.

"Lola, can a talk to you for a second?" I piped up, struggling to be heard over the buzz of high pitched laughter. The constant giggling was, in all honesty, getting very annoying after only having heard it for about five minutes.

She looked up at us. "Oh, sure, Beverly!" she seemed oddly eager. Oh boy...

She dislodged herself from the mass of girls and sat down at the nearest empty table, motioning for us to do the same. We did so, only a little reluctantly.

"Uh, so we were going to talk about, um, stuff," I stated off. It appeared that I was completely incapable of beginning a conversation with someone I'd known for less than five years, without being awkward.

She nodded. "What date's good for you?"

I blinked, a little bewildered. I had been completely prepared for her to just ask me flat out what was going on. Well not prepared really (if she actually had done that, I probably would have come up with something dumb like pretending not to be able to hear her), that was merely what I was expecting her to do.

"Well, you're busy next Friday-."

"All weekend, actually. Sorry."

"Right. So not then. What about the Saturday after that?"

"Sandy's going to be in Chicago that Saturday. She's visiting her grandparents."

"Sandy's coming to?" I was fine with that. Now that I thought about it, I really missed her. But their presence might complicate things slightly...

"Yeah. And Joe too," she responded nonchalantly.

"Joe? Does he have to?"

She looked at me skeptically. "I thought you liked him."

I winced automatically. "Well, I do but... does he have to?"

"Yes. I want to hear the story from all points of view."

"Has anyone ever told you you'd make a good lawyer?"

"No. When are you free after Halloween?"

"Um, what about November tenth?"

"Is that a Saturday?"

"Yeah. It is."

"Thought so. Good. So I'll see you at my house then. Call me if you need details."

I nodded uncomfortably. Us, Sandy/Christine, and Joe/Raoul. All in the same room. Having a peaceful, non-offensive conversation. Without violence. What is wrong with this picture?

I looked at my math notebook. I still had a lot of homework to finish before the end of lunch period.

The bell rang, signifying the end of lunch period.

Well, I decided, if I could live through the past two months, chances were I could survive one more murderous algebra teacher.

**Summer: Yes, I am aware of how suckish that one was. And how short. I'm sorry... but, on the bright side, I'm plotting out a really fun chapter coming up. How will they all handle being in the same room together ****without**** killing each other...?** **Oh, maybe they won't!**

**Erik: Review and Summer won't infect you with insanity.**

**Summer:... You're ****okay**** with you all being in the same room and possibly killing each other?**

**Erik: As long as Christine stays alive, I'm good.**

**Summer: Why would I kill off Christine?**

**Erik: It doesn't matter, as long as you're aware of what I would do to you if you did.**

**Summer: Quite aware...**

**Erik: Flame and, when you wake up tomorrow, you'll wish you hadn't.**


	18. Of Dandruff And Brain Explosions

**Summer: I'm** **so sorry this is so late! I really wanted to have it up sooner, in fact, I tried to finish it over last weekend, I swear I did. But, unless I left you with a really crappy chapter, I just didn't have time. It was a really busy weekend between writing the first four pages of this, seeing two plays, taking my highschool admission test, piano lessons, baby sitting my sister, sleeping over at a friend's house, Sunday school, and frantically trying to get my holiday shopping done and having everybody over for Christmas... I'm depressed.**

**Erik: Why?**

**Summer: ...I have no idea....**

**Erik: Do you need therapy again?**

**Summer: NO!**

**Erik: Special thanks to I Am The Phantom of the Opera, Kaylia, Falling Stardust, Love of Darkness, Belle, Brooke Blue, Courtney Hale, and Broadway Geek for reviewing. Summer doesn't own anything. Although, perhaps she would be less depressed if she did...**

**Summer: ****Extra**** special thanks to I Am The Phantom of the Opera for submitting my one-hundredth review!! You people all rock my depressed little socks. And sorry, again, that I haven't updated in five-hundred lives of men.**

'It is not snowing. I refuse to acknowledge the fact that there is snow is falling from the sky,' I insisted stubbornly as we watched the tiny white specks float down to the ground and glitter at our feet. It was November tenth. We were supposed to be at Lola's house in twenty minutes.

'_I am perfectly fine with that. However, if it is not snowing, how would you explain this?_' Erik thought, gesturing to the snow swirling around us. He was being a good sport. After half a month, he still didn't want to discuss this whole thing with Lola and the rest of them. I didn't either, really. But we were both putting up with it anyway.

I nodded. 'That's easy. White flakes are falling in a downwards direction because the clouds have dandruff,' I explained confidently. G/d, how I wished to believe my own story. Except, it was snowing, and I knew it. The truth was, I just really didn't want it to be winter. Winter, to me, had always signified the easy part of life ending and the hard, boring part starting up again. And yet, winter was here and I couldn't stop it. The cold wind bit into our face and hands, making our cheeks flush pink with chill. The sidewalk we stood on was blanketed with a slippery coating of ice and now the trees had more snow on them than leaves. Hello, winter.

'_Snow is common during this time of season_,' he reminded me, seeing my grudging thoughts.

"No. You just got here," I protested out loud (what? It's not like anyone could hear us!), "and when you hopped into the picture, it was ninety-nine degrees outside. Hey, is that Evony?"

"_It would appear to be_."

"Why is she outside without a coat on?"

"_I advise asking __her__.'_

I shrugged. "Alright. Hey, Evony?"

She caught site of us and made her way over through the softly falling snow to join us, shivering. "Hi. How long do you think it will snow for? Long enough for them to call a snow-day on Monday?" she asked cheerfully.

"Maybe," I said hopefully, and then added bitterly, "It's not snow, it's dandruff!"

She frowned. "Huh?"

"_Miss Redmond has decided to ignore her problems again_," Erik explained -needlessly, in my opinion. Didn't I always ignore my problems in life?

She still looked a bit skeptical and confused, but she nodded saying, "Ah. I see."

"So, why exactly don't you have a coat on?" I asked her.

"I forgot to grab it. I was sort of in a hurry to get out of the house... my dad's a bit drunk," she admitted.

I grimaced, thinking, 'Dang. I have to be less nosy.'

'_You certainly do. You seem to have quite a gift for touching on awkward subjects_,' he responded dryly. Well, there was one good thing about my compadre: he never tried to spare your feelings by being dishonest.

'What can I say, I'm in my awkward stage. Awkward times call for awkward measures,' I thought, unshaken. Out loud, I said to Evony, "Sorry to hear that. Will you be okay?"

She smiled and said, "Yeah, it's fine. Actually this is a pretty good thing. Come about three thirty, he'll have a hangover, and then he'll be too sluggish to hurt people. He'll just lie on the couch for the rest of the day. But I do need to stay out of the vicinity for a few hours."

"Oh. Well, you want to come with us?" I offered, "It'll keep you out of your house long enough... plus we kind of need a friend there who isn't two people at the same time."

"Alright," she agreed, adding, "Where are you going?"

I hesitated. Finally, I replied, "I'm not telling you. You won't want to come anymore," biting our upper lip uncomfortably.

She laughed. "Beverly, my choices are either go with you guys or stay at home with my drunken foster father. Do you really think I'll back out on this one?"

I shrugged. "I guess not," I said neutrally, "We're going to Lola Andrew's place to have a group therapy session with her, Sandy Hall, Joe White, Christine, and Monsieur le Fop. We're predicting a heavy amount of awkwardness and perhaps some depression, so be ready. Oh, and Raoul tends to whack people across the face for no particular reason. Be careful of him."

"I'm used to that. But wait, you said Joe White would be there. Do you mean the Joe White? The same one ninety-nine percent of the freshman girls spend half their time shamelessly staring at," she paused, "now that I think about it, I've caught some of the ninth grade guys staring at him the same way."

"_Yes, she was referring to exactly that Joe White_," Erik said, skimming through my previous knowledge, trying to figure out why guys would stare that way at other guys. He finally found the manilla folder in the messed up file cabinet that is my brain marked 'homosexuals' and started reading through it.

"Thought so," Evony smirked.

"Which freshmen have you seen staring at him?" I inquired, frowning deeply.

"Well, naturally, his girlfriend, Sandy-," here I inevitably scowled involuntarily, "-Lola on occasion, but not with too much of a lovesick expression. Let's see, there was also Anna Cay, Lea Smith, Juliette Bloom, Angie Pattinson, Bailey Lowe... and you."

I blushed hard and felt our face heat up as the blood rushed into it. "Yeah," I mumbled, "that's one of the multiple reasons why this afternoon's going to be probably one of the most awkward in our lifetimes. Come on, let's go. It's a pretty long walk."

We all fell into step beside one another. We each looked down at our feet to try and shield our faces from the icy winds coming at us from the opposite direction. The sharp air current thundered in our ears, though the day was pretty calm. It carried our voices away and behind us so we had to shout to be heard -except, of course, in the case of Erik and I.

"How far is it?" she called after we had been walking about fifteen minutes.

"About ten blocks. Some long, some short," I answered reluctantly.

She frowned. "Shouldn't you be taking a car ride there or something? Especially in this weather," she added, hugging her arms to her torso for warmth. Erik shrugged off our light autumn coat and shoved it towards her. What a perfect (murderous) gentleman.

She looked at it and said, "Keep it, I'm fine!"

I sighed. I knew how this one went: she politely refused to take the coat, saying she would feel guilty taking it from us, and he would feel slightly bruised in his pride and insist that she take it, and she would politely refuse again... and it would go on forever. I decided to cut it short before we all froze to death. "Nope," I stated matter-of-factly and threw the coat at her. She smiled good-naturedly and shook her head, but thrust her arms through the sleeves anyway. She kept trying to give it back at various other points in the trip.

I think by the time we got to Lola's house, all three of us were just about frozen stiff, regardless of who was wearing the coat. I punched the doorbell with a numb finger and heard the chime-like buzzer go off from inside, accompanied by the sound of light footsteps. Lola opened the door and smiled. We all blinked in shock, we had been expecting her to be frighteningly happy again. But no, just a normal, non-scary smile. "C'mon in," she said, motioning for us to step inside and shutting the door behind us when we did.

"So. I see you recruited another one," she commented, not unkindly.

"Yeah. Although, I really don't have anything to do with all this," Evony admitted, "I'm sort of just the quiet kid sitting in the back round."

"That's fine," Lola replied, flicking her hair over her shoulder and leading us into the same room as before -the one with the defective DVD player that had caused us so much pain.

We stopped short as we entered the room and saw its inhabitants looking at us just as worriedly as we did at them. "Oh...," I remarked carefully, "The gang's all here... already."

So, just to give you a li'l explanation, nothing terribly awful was happening. It was just that we were a bit taken aback to see Sandy/Christine and Joe/Raoul already there. The fact that we were all in the same room gave the setting a lovely awkward and strained feeling. Neither of us were really sure what to say, so we just walked in and made ourselves at home.

Well, I did, anyway.

_**Lola Andrew...**_

And then, some very odd things all started happening at once.

First of all, they all started talking to themselves.

"I just don't want this to come between me and her anymore. I'm just going to talk to her like nothing weird is going on," Sandy murmured. To herself.

She shook her head. "_If you think it will help, then don't let me hinder you_," she replied. To herself. She got up from her place on the couch where she had been seated beside Joe and shyly approached Beverly. "Berly," she said with fake cheerfulness to compete with my own, "It's been so long since I've seen you! How have you been? We have to catch up later."

"Well," mused Beverly, "actually you saw me yesterday at school. But that's okay, give me a hug anyway!" Before Sandy had a chance to stop her (which it looked for a second like she did), Beverly pulled her into a tight bear-hug. She didn't let go for a while.

When she finally did, she muttered, "_That was uncivil_." To herself.

She laughed. At herself. "Oh, come on! I did that just for you. You know you liked it," she retorted to, you guessed it, herself.

Then Joe started doing it too. "_I wish you wouldn't_ _act so comfortable with the situation,_" he scolded himself, "_This is more dangerous than you realize_."

He laughed at himself too and said, "They're not going to do anything. Besides, it's them that keeps this whole thing from getting boring."

"Although," Beverly commented, joining his conversation with nobody, "we do owe you a minor injury of some sort for that bruise you gave us in August."

I looked at Evony. "What? You're not going to tell yourself something absurdly incomprehensible? Or are you content, as I am, to just watch them do it?" I jerked a thumb at Beverly, Joe and Sandy.

Sandy gave a small, bright smile. Joe and Beverly both sort of laughed and scowled at me at the same time.

I tried my best to ignore that -it was just a bit disturbing. "So, you guys want to tell me what's going on, or just further confuse me until my brain explodes?"

"Okay, we'll tell you," Sandy conceded.

"Yeah, even though a brain explosion would have been entertaining, we'll spare you," Joe agreed, "What would you do if I told you that Sandy, Beverly, and I all have the spirits of various main characters from Phantom of the Opera inhabiting our bodies while our own spirits are still stuck there as well?"

"Huh?"

"Yup," he grinned, "Sandy equals Christine-."

"Joe equals Raoul," Sandy continued for him.

I looked at Beverly, at last catching on. "And that leaves Beverly with..."

"Uh-huh," Beverly confirmed, gazing at the carpet.

Oh.

Ah! And I'd done all that stuff...

I practically tortured him!...

Crap!

**Summer: I know, that one wasn't much. I promise to continue the, uh, get-together in the next chapter. When ever that is.**

**Erik: Review and Summer will stop being depressed and love you forever**. **Flame and... hey, Summer, what do I do if they flame?**

**Summer: You know what, just flame. I don't care.**


	19. Of CocaCola And Political Titles

**Summer: Sorry for yet another long wait. School started back up and now I'm busy with homework and crap again. I'll try to update every week or so, but, with my massive procrastination issue, it will probably end up being more like every two of three weeks**. **Hey, Erik, I could update faster if you did my homework for me!**

**Erik: Nope. Special thanks to Broadway Geek, Falling Stardust, Affair of the heart, Unknown to love, Shadow Archer, Love of Darkness, I Am The Phantom Of The Opera, Edward Cullen Is Hawt, Brooke Blue, Girly Card, and Courtney Hale for reviewing.**

**Summer: Wowza! That chapter did really good. Probably 'cause no bad stuff happened to you in that one.**

**Erik: I thought that was a nice touch, too. Summer doesn't own Phantom of the Opera or anything else she wishes she owns.**

There was a long and (need I say it?) Awkward silence, which I didn't know how to break and none of the others apparently saw fit to. Just when I was absolutely positive my eardrums were going to burst due to infuriating quietness, Lola mercifully decided to speak up.

"If I groveled at your feet and begged for pardon, would you forgive me for all that stuff I did?"

We blinked. Neither I, nor Erik had been expecting her to say that. Normally, people who are complemented as often as Lola was on their good looks or natural charm get sort of used to the lime light and become really proud. So much so that they'll never admit they're wrong or apologize for anything.

Then again, one should never doubt the typical phangirl's bond to Erik.

He responded, "_No groveling is necessary as long as you swear never to make another 'observation' in your life._"

She smiled brightly. Purely. I realized all her other smiles had seemed somehow... inaccurate. That makes no sense, but I don't know how else to explain it.

Well, the meeting continued. Havoc ensued, obviously. I mean, come on, you can't really expect this type of thing to go totally smoothly.

_**Evony Gray...**_

Sandy frowned, suddenly and for no apparent reason. "Hey," she said, "what bruise?"

We all looked at her oddly. It was Beverly who spoke first. The eloquence of her reply was astounding: "Huh?"

Sandy smirked halfheartedly and shook their head. "I know, we're kind of late with this one. But a couple minutes ago-," she looked at Beverly, "- you said 'that bruise you gave us in August'. So..."

Christine finished for her. "_What bruise?"_

Beverly gasped at Raoul with exaggerated theatricality. "Ooh, you didn't tell them?" She raised their eyebrows in a way that would have been horribly annoying if you were on the wrong side of them. "Shame, shame, shame."

Christine appeared to be getting slightly aggravated. "_Didn't tell us what?_ _What didn't you tell us?_"

I thought Joe was about to say something. But before he could, Beverly pointed accusingly at them and exclaimed, with the utmost seriousness, "Raoul beats up small children!" She seemed to be getting a kick out of the afternoon so far.

Raoul Exploded. Honestly, he looked so angry I thought he was going to pop a vein (that would have been unfortunate for Joe, who seemed nice enough). "In no way is that true!" he insisted loudly.

"_On the contrary, Miss Redmond speaks truthfully, if ungracefully_," Erik said smoothly.

"What are you talking about?" Sandy sputtered.

Lola joined in. "One of you guys has got to tell me about this one," she agreed.

"Actually," I said, trying to recall Beverly's explanation of this experience from a few weeks ago, "I don't think I heard about this either."

"Okay, I'll tell it," Beverly said eagerly "it was right after theater camp, when Erik, like, obliterated that solo. That first day you didn't show, Sandy. So we ran into Joe and Raoul, right? I mean literally, it was a huge collision, we all ended up on the ground. So we got up, and apparently Raoul'd had a bad day. So he decided he was going to take out his anger issues on Erik and me. And we ended up with this enormous bruise on our face. It was hilarious! Well, no it wasn't, but that's what I was talking about. And I'm a small child. Thus saying, Raoul truly does beat up small children."

Sandy/Christine looked at Joe/Raoul with an air of offended shock about them. Beverly/Erik grinned evilly. No one spoke.

"So," began Lola, "guess I'll break this silence too." she looked at Beverly/Erik, "isn't it really weird for you two being all... different genders and what not?"

"Yes," Beverly confirmed, "all the time. Especially during monthly visits from Aunt Flo."

Raoul frowned, looking confused. "I don't quite understand what your aunt has to do with any of this."

We all cracked up. Sandy, Beverly, Lola, and I did, anyway. It's one thing when someone says something funny or dumb as a joke, but it's just hilarious when they actually mean it. I laughed until a sharp, stinging pain in my side warned me to calm down.

"Oh my gosh, that was adorable," Lola gushed to no one in particular, "he's so innocent and uninformed, just like a little kid. Raoul, I'm going to adopt you!"

I remembered to myself what hundreds of girls would think of Raoul if he wasn't wearing Joe's face. I pictured adopting the Viscount I'd first seen in the Phantom of the Opera movie three years ago, grimacing at the thought of making him and his annoying hair part of my family. "Ew," was my opinion put into words.

Lola heard me and said, "You're right, that's disgusting. Never mind, Fop," supposedly remembering that she had been addressing the despised enemy of the majority of phans.

"Why does everyone here call you that?" Joe asked Raoul curiously, "is it some sort of political title or something?"

"_No_," Raoul said flatly.

"We call him that because it's what he is," Beverly put in cheerfully.

Raoul tried to give her a death glare, but compared to Erik's it looked more like an encouraging smile.

Beverly seemed to think so too, because she mumbled, "Epic fail," to the floor. Or maybe she was talking to Erik.

"Wait, Beverly, can you answer a question for me?" Joe said.

"Sure," Beverly replied, "what's the question?"

He hesitated. "I don't get the Aunt Flo thing either."

She laughed happily. "No. I'm not answering that one. Ask Sandy later."

Sandy pouted.

"So," Lola was undergoing an unenthusiastic attempt at keeping this thing organized, "um, let's talk about the changes in appearance and physicality, and your reactions to it."

"Leaving now," Beverly informed us matter-of-factly, uprooting herself from their place of leaning against one of the walls. "Lola, where's your kitchen? we'll get everyone drinks."

"I was going to say you didn't have to participate," Lola feigned offence, "but it's down the down the hall. The third door on the left."

"Cool. I hope you all want cokes 'cause that's what you're all getting." They left the room. Something in their stride told me they wouldn't be coming back for a while.

"Um, so, what's it like being the same person, but with a different physical appearance?" Lola attempted again.

"_Well,_" Christine started off, "_for us it took some getting used to. But it was more surprising than disturbing._"

"_For Joe it was quite a shock,_" said Raoul.

"Are you kidding," Joe scoffed, "I was fine with about whole thing. You practically had a heart attack!"

Raoul muttered something in French.

"I imagine it had more of an effect on Erik and Berly than any of us," Sandy said thoughtfully.

There came a call from the kitchen: "Hey, we can hear you, you know! _I must say none of this is bothering me so much as it is bothering Miss Redmond._ Shut up, Erik!" some mild chuckling and, "Woah, you laughed! Are you feeling okay?"

"_I do pity the girl, Beverly, and her circumstances_," Raoul confessed.

"Why?" Beverly asked, reentering the room with an armload of coca-cola cans.

"_You can't honestly say yo don't mind having that __thing__ as such a constant companion._"

"What thing?" she looked like she actually didn't know who he was talking about.

She waited for a few seconds, her face blank, until I darkly explained "He meant Erik." What a jerk Raoul was. What a fop. Everything the rabid phangirls had said was right. "Of course, not everyone would agree," I added.

Beverly crinkled her nose. "Not everyone? No one would agree!" seeing Raoul frown she went on, "Seriously, he's the best. We're compadres."

The eight of us conversed for a while. Raoul said some more stupid stuff. At one point, Beverly burst into howling laughter and said "Man, you should have said that out loud!" but she and Erik both refused to tell the rest of us what he had been thinking. Although we all had feelings that it had been something less than complimentary about the viscount to my right. Once, Joe/Raoul and Beverly/Erik nearly got into a fist-fight, but I think it was between Beverly and Raoul rather than Erik and Raoul. Beverly seemed to have made herself an enemy.

All in all, the gathering went relatively well. We all walked out alive, which definitely counts for something. When Beverly/Erik and I left the scene, they were wearing a satisfied smile. I know they had both been expecting the worst and the worst hadn't happened. She had even managed to have a bit of fun with it... I think he might have too.

**Summer: I'm so, so sorry for how late this was. I meant to have it up around last night, but we had a bit of a medical scare (everything's fine now though!). And I just didn't have time. And this morning and afternoon was my sister's birthday party**, **which, of course, I had to attend.**

**Erik: That, and Summer's massive procrastination issue.**

**Summer: Which has already been discussed. Anyway, at the party we saw the movie ****Inkheart****. It was almost as awesome as** **anyone who reviews. Flame and I'll send The Shadow after you!**


	20. Of Boyfriending Lessons and Uncle Erik

**Erik: Special thanks to Broadway Geek, Broke Blue, Affair of the Heart, Silvara, Love's Labour's Won, Love of Darkness, Courtney Hale, Shadow Archer, Unknown to Love, Girly Card, and falling stardust for reviewing.**

**Summer: Sorry for another long wait. I have writers block. Erik?**

**Erik: What.**

**Summer: -whines- I don't know what to write about!**

**Erik: Good. I know exactly how to end your story: everybody gets their own body back, Beverly moves to Japan, Raoul gets hit by an airplane, and Erik and Christine get married and live happily ever after.**

**Summer: I've got it: I'll do a chapter divided between the points of view** **every main character, thus displaying each's reaction to the previous chapter and showing their feelings toward the situation!**

**Erik: I hate you.**

**Summer: I love you too! I own nothing.**

'It's still snowing,' I whined internally. I was purposely walking agonizingly slowly into the school building, just to postpone meeting up with my French teacher. I swear that woman hated me. Probably because I knew more French than she did.

'_I am aware of that._' Ah, the joys of comradery. Oh, well. At least, unlike before, there were certain points in time in which he and I weren't actually arguing. We sort of had an unspoken treaty: I keep my mouth shut and try not to act dumb, and he won't remind me to keep my mouth shut and not act dumb.

Okay, can I ask you guys something: do I really act that dumb?

Evony approached us from the bus she had just gotten off. "Hi. So nothing terrible happened for the remainder of the weekend?"

"Well," I replied thoughtfully, "I had some pretty crazy nightmares last night."

"you always have nightmares, Beverly. I thought it was a side effect of the whole Erik predicament.

Erik apparently felt it was necessary to respond for me. _"It is. Miss Redmond simply has an addiction to talking and could think of nothing better to say."_

I shrugged and rolled my eyes. "Guilty as charged. But seriously, Erik, I wouldn't have the weird dreams if you didn't have such depressing thoughts while I was asleep."

Nora joined us. "Who's Erik?" she asked distractedly. Great. Apparently, she'd overheard that last snippet of our conversation.

I tried. I really did. "My... uncle. My uncle Erik. Yeah, he's staying at my house for a couple days." Alas, no avail.

'_Again, you blurt out the first thing that comes to mind_,' he thought so very helpfully.

'And you could have done better?'

'_Yes._'

'Well, you know... yeah, you're probably right.'

Nora gave us an odd look (she had no more difficulty than everybody else in detecting when exactly it was that I was lying) and shrugged it off. "I heard Sandy Hall and Joe White have been fighting. Rumor has it they might break up."

Now that got out attention. "Where'd you hear it?" I demanded probably more forcefully than I should have. We had practically given up on separating them considering they had seemed painfully happy together and neither of us ever succeeded in coming up with a way to break them up without violence. But of course, if they were breaking up on their own, we weren't going to object.

"Lola Andrew," she responded, frowning, "I honestly have no idea why she was talking to me, but she told me to tell you about it. Hey, you're not going to start chasing after Joe now, are you?

I shook our head and replied, "My uncle Erik probably won't let me."

_**Joe White...**_

"Come on, Sandy," Lola pleaded, making her world famous puppy-dog eyes, "I want to talk to you and everyone's going to get mad at me if I don't sit over there. Please come with me?"

"No," Sandy said stubbornly.

We were trying to convince Sandy to sit with us in our normal seats at the 'popular table'. In other words, yes, we were having an argument over where we would sit at lunch. Pretty stupid. "Everyone there is your friend," I attempted, "It wouldn't be that bad."

"I don't want to!"

I shrugged at Lola. She whispered, "You're her boyfriend. Can't you smooth talk her into it or something?"

Well, I could try. "You're pretty when you're angry."

'_Your 'smooth talking' could use some improvement_,' Raoul informed me.

'Look who's talking.' I didn't really need boyfriending lessons from him of all people.

Anyway, I guess he was right because I'd gotten Sandy pretty mad. "Why don't you go sit with her," she jerked a sharp nod in the direction of Beverly, who was ignorantly joking around with her friends, on the other side of the cafeteria. "I bet she'd love that!"

I gaped at the back of her head as she stormed away. She was jealous! But... why?

'_I believe she was referring to Miss Redmond and her infatuation with you._'

'Thanks, Captain Obvious. By the way, what are you and Christine going to do if Sandy breaks up with me?'

'_Heed my advise on your smooth talking and such preparation won't be needed._'

I gritted my teeth. 'I just love your sense of modesty.'

'_Why, thank you_.'

There were times (like right now for instance) when I wanted to jab something in our eye just because Raoul didn't think I should. 'Raoul, next time you get the chance, go look up the word 'sarcasm' in the dictionary.'

'_Why on Earth?_'

This was going to be a long afternoon.

_**Sam Harper...**_

The afternoon was surprisingly average. Just the way everything used to be before whatever had happened to Beverly happened. She was sitting to my left and Nora across from us. Nothing even exploded this time.

I suppose if one thing was out of the ordinary, it was that Nora seemed to be having a brilliant time playing match-maker for Beverly and I. Although, I have to admit, I didn't mind terribly. Oddly enough, Beverly didn't either. Or at least, she was making a valiant effort at pretending not to notice, whereas if this had happened last week, she would have told us she had a headache and stormed away.

Actually, she was in an overall much better mood than usual. Now that I thought about it, she never had done well with change. What had been bugging her was probably just this new school and all these new people. But now that she'd gotten used to all of them, she was back to herself.

Nora thoughtfully picked up a sandwich. "I'm tired of peanut butter on wheat," she declared and flung it at a garbage can about twenty feet away. It also happened to be right behind Beverly's head, which meant she had to duck drastically to avoid being hit by Nora's makeshift missel. And that caused her to loose her balance and practically fall into my lap.

Her hair smelled nice. She re-composed herself while I snapped myself out of it.

Beverly was in such a good mood, she didn't even accuse Nora of causing that on purpose -which we all knew she had.

"Nice aim," she joked.

"I know," Nora said happily. "Hey, you guys are taking English literature, right?"

We both nodded.

"Yeah, me too. I heard we were going to be assigned to read The Notebook. It's supposed to be reeaaally romantic."

Beverly looked detached. "Oh, good," she muttered softly.

"I wish I had a boyfriend," Nora sighed dreamily. I knew for a fact that much was strictly untrue. "Don't you, Beverly?"

Beverly shook her head.

"Why?" Nora continued mercilessly, "You already have one?"

Beverly suddenly laughed. "I don't think my uncle Erik would allow that."

I frowned. She had an Uncle Erik?

_**Beverly Redmond...**_

Well, what reason didn't I have to be in a good mood? We'd had a substitute in French class today, Lola was now refraining from torturing us, and, just to top it beautifully off, Sandy/Christine and Joe/Raoul were indeed, quite clearly fighting.

Nora's match-making was sort of annoying Uncle Erik (as was his new nickname), but if I hadn't had his emotions nagging at my own, I would have been fine with it. It wasn't like she was trying to set me up with someone I hated or anything.

'So what do we do once they break up?' I thought, trying to start a conversation. That actually was a pretty important issue considering once they were both single, I would be going after Joe and Erik would be going after Christine. Which would be difficult to do at the same time.

'_You don't even have particularly strong feelings about Monsieur_ _White anymore,_' he pointed out. It was true. Raoul's horrible Roulness was ruining my shameless crush on Joe. Which didn't have me very happy with a certain viscount, thank you very much.

But it did have Erik in a better mood than usual. He had never been a fan of my affections for poor Joe.

Oh well. Maybe this was better for all of us.

_**Erik...**_ (A/N: okay, this means Berly's thoughts will be in italics instead of his.)

Beverly had unwisely procrastinated on every bit of homework she had been assigned. As much as I disapproved of such actions, it had caused her to get to sleep late and left her exhausted. Which provided that now, in the middle of the night while she was deeply asleep, I could at least think for myself without having her interject her opinions on everything.

I was beginning to worry for her. This, of course, wasn't necessary, but it seemed to be out of forceful habit. I wasn't exactly positive when she'd began referring to me as 'Compadre', but I knew she was now. Companion. A word that suggested she had some sort of bond to me. As far as I knew, most people who'd had one of those hadn't lasted long.

Purely out of curiosity, I tuned into her thoughts briefly in order to see what dreams she was having. For once, it was one of her own dreams, and didn't involve me. She appeared to be fantasizing of falling from a very great height.

I sighed. At least she managed to sleep through my dreams, but this sort tended to wake her promptly. She would be (quite literally) present in my thoughts again within the minute.

When she jolted awake, I was standing silently in front of her bookshelf. Over her fourteen years, she had collected quite a library. '_I was having the weirdest dream..._'

'Go back to sleep.'

'_I was falling off a ride at Six Flags or something._'

'No, you were not. You were dreaming you were. Go back to sleep.'

'_Fine._'

In three minutes time, she was unconscious again. I shook our head softly. She would only be awakened by another nightmare.

**Erik: At least you finally gave me a narrative.**

**Summer: See? I'm so good to you! Reviews make Erik very happy.**

**Erik: flames do not.**


	21. Of Goats And The Great Wall Of China

**Summer: oh, my Gawd! I'm so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so sorry!! It's been months since my last update! I deserve to be locked in Erik's torture chamber.**

**Erik: I tried. She knows all the ways out.**

**Summer: Anyway, I'm back now. Extra special thanks to Love of darkness, Kelsey, Brooke Blue, Broadway Geek, Ana, Courtney Hale, Evony Shadow, Gray Seal, I Am The Phantom Of The Opera, and Falling Stardust for reviewing. Another extra special thanks to anyone else who put up with the eternity between these chapters.**

**Erik: Summer doesn't own Phantom of the Opera. Or a social life.**

"Beverly!" Sam managed to regain my attention. I'd spent most of the past five minutes watching Sandy/Christine and Joe/Raoul pretend not to be fighting. Erik seemed more cheerful than usual... or I guess 'less depressed' would be a more accurate term, but you get the idea.

All the same, I barely managed to respond in an intelligible way. "Wha... oh. Sorry, I was spacing you out. Didn't get much sleep last night because of nightmares and stuff. You were going to say something?"

'_Do you realize how unconvincing it sounds when you say your attention is faulty due to lack of sleep, yet you were staring at Monsieur White with unabridged alertness?' _Erik had been staring at Joe/Raoul also, possibly trying to burn holes in their head with his eyes. Unfortunately, the death glare isn't very affective when the victim can't actually see it.

'Compadre, if you knew something better to say, you could have said it.' as it happened, he knew at least five better things to say, but I had opened my mouth first. I turned my focus back to Sam.

"We're here," he told me, "the bus is stopped. I know you hate to accept it, but we actually have to go to school once the bus ride is over."

I frowned. "Really? Because honestly, I'd rather just ride home now." We reluctantly climbed off the bus.

'At least it's almost summer break,' I thought, trying to identify this morning's silver lining.

'_Your school term has barely started_.'

'You're so depressing.'

Aside from life being a little better after Lola's apparent decision that we didn't deserve to be driven insane (more so than we already were), nothing much had changed. Just an average Tuesday, after an average Monday, after an average Sunday. Saturday hadn't been very normal even if we had all walked out of the meeting thingy unscathed. But anyway, life was still life, once you get used to the fact that I had a guy talking to me in my head.

Of course, Sandy and Joe's worsening relationship was a nice touch. I had personally been expecting them to last much longer than the month or two they'd managed so far, but I wasn't complaining. We weren't sure yet how Christine and Raoul were feeling about this, but if Erik decided to put any of his own strategies into action while I was asleep, that was easily going to be remedied. As long as I didn't wake up until it was over. Even if they all did break up though, that kind of left us in a what-do-we-do-now predicament for obvious reasons. Truth be told, we hadn't worked out what we were going to do once they were separated. We didn't think we would get that far.

The first half of the day drifted painfully by without much happening. My French teacher, as usual, refrained from teaching us anything we hadn't already known for ages, so instead of paying attention to her, I started telling Erik jokes in our head to see if I could get him to crack a smile. It didn't work (even without his cheerful disposition, the fact that he could see my thoughts killed the punch lines).

The bell signifying that French class was over always seemed to sound like someone telling me I'd won the lottery. After that we had math class -we usually had that right after lunch, but there were some inspector people here or something and the school schedule was all screwy. Erik had made me actually finish my homework last night. As it happened, the inspector people, whoever they were, never showed, so I spent most of that class telling jokes as well.

'Okay, so Angelina Jolie, the Hunchback of Notre-Dame, and Shrek all go have lunch together and Shrek says... Oh, wait you wouldn't like this one. Never mind.'

'_You would do well to pay attention to your teacher. It might help you with the exam you're scheduled to take tomorrow._'

'Seriously? I have a test tomorrow?'

'_You would know that if you had payed attention_.'

'Oh well, I'll fail whatever happens. Anyway, there's this prospector in a small town in southern Texas...'

'_This story takes minutes and ends completely pointlessly_.'

'You know, you could at least pretend not to know every joke I tell you.'

"Miss Redmond," it looked like my math teacher wasn't going to let me finish the joke either. "Have you been paying any attention since the beginning of this class?" Ladies and gentleman, Erik was right again.

"Uhh..."

"What have we been discussing so far today?" The man knew I hadn't been listening, why did he have to make me admit it?

I looked down at my textbook, which was lying open on my desk. I read off the first three words that caught my eye: "The quadratic formula?"

"And that is...?"

I actually knew this one. "Theorem eight point two."

"I don't want a synonym, I want specifics. If you have been paying attention, you will easily be able to tell me the quadratic formula."

"_The opposite of the middle term of an equation plus or minus the square root of the middle term squared minus four times the first term multiplied by the last term over two multiplied by the first term_. _But only if the result of the problem being square rooted is positive._" (A/N: true story.)

The math teacher nodded grudgingly and returned to ranting about a confusing jumble of letters and numbers scrawled on the chalkboard.

'I owe you.'

'_That you do_.'

With renewed determination, I resumed my quest of undepressicating him. However, it was lunch time by the time I actually succeeded: I pictured Raoul and that, naturally, didn't help much. Then, I pictured Raoul getting flattened by a truck and Erik actually perked up a bit. I was quite proud of myself (but a bit puzzled as to why I hadn't thought of that before).

We were sitting with Nora and Sam again. Just like always. Sam was reading something for some class he was taking that I wasn't while Nora was contentedly picking apart another sandwich. To amuse myself, I pictured more undesirable things happening to Raoul (falling out of an airplane, getting locked in the same room as the plant from Little Shop of Horrors, etc...) Just to see if I could brighten our phantom friend up a bit more.

I was halfway through the process of imagining him being eaten by a ravenous billy-goat when Evony joined us. "Good morning, Miss Gray," I acknowledged happily. Erik nodded a greeting, but, needless to say, didn't say anything out loud.

"Hi," she said and sat down next to Nora. "Are you guys taking French this semester?"

"Beverly and me are," Nora answered for us, "Sam's taking some weird language that he had to test into because normal freshmen usually aren't capable of it."

He looked up from whatever he was reading. "Latin," he corrected, "and freshmen are allowed to take a Latin course, but I'm doing a harder class because I already knew some of it." He turned his attention back to the book.

Evony shrugged and directed her conversation towards me and Nora. "I heard your French teacher gave you some pretty epic homework over the weekend. I was talking to Bailey Lowe and she said it took her about four hours on Sunday night."

Nora grimaced. "It took me five." They both looked at me expectantly.

"I actually thought it was pretty easy..." I mumbled, "but I had some help."

Evony shook her head sadly (probably discouraged over my inability to keep a secret for more than a minute) as Nora asked, "From who? No one in your family speaks French."

"Um," I replied hastily, "May does. Yeah, she took the same course I'm taking now last year. When she was in third grade." Smooth, Berly.

'_Miss Redmond, next time we come upon a situation in which we are required to deceive someone, I believe it would be in both of our best interests if you would simply remain silent_.'

'Right. Sorry."

Nora sighed impatiently. "Beverly, who were you really talking about?"

"You know what? Ask me that same question in twenty years, and I swear I'll tell you," I conceded.

She looked skeptical, but Evony came to our rescue. "She probably just won't answer you because she doesn't want to admit that it took her twenty hours." (I couldn't remember the last time I'd even been awake for twenty hours, but I decided to take Erik's advise and not contradict her.) And then the bell came to our rescue as well.

Time for another class I didn't plan on paying attention to.

A few hours later, we were walking home from the bus stop with Evony. The snowflakes had stopped free falling, but they had built up to form a miniature Great Wall of China on each side of the pavement. Walking through or over it wasn't immensely easy and when the blizzard had trudged away, it hadn't bothered to bring the cold with it, so the chill lingered here and took its rejection out on the three of us. We were all quaking like puppies at a vet convention.

I was curious as to whether our mouth was too frozen shut to ever speak again, so I experimentally said, "Hey, Evony. What were you going to ask about at lunch this afternoon?"

She looked at us anxiously and said, "Nothing. Just the French homework."

"No. You were about to say something else before you said the French homework thing, but you didn't. And then for the rest of the day you were giving me the there's-something-I'm-not-telling-you look. I did notice it... or at least, Erik did."

She blushed a bit and frowned. "I was going to tell you that Sandy and Joe broke up, which also means that... yeah. Anyway, I know that's a good thing and all, but I wasn't sure how you guys would take it because-."

"Hang on, I need you to stop talking for a moment, so I can make a sufficient mental note to sing the jingle from the Fruity Cheerios commercial all the way through as soon as I'm out of public."

"I'm glad to know you're pleased with the situation." She smiled. "But what are do you two going to do now?"

"Evony," I announced proudly, "I have no idea!"

"You know, I think you, Beverly, should just stop chasing after Joe. Imagine going out with Raoul," she advised.

The three of us simultaneously grimaced. With that kind of disturbing logic in mind, I couldn't help but agree.

"You know who you should go out with?" she went on, "Sam Harper. The one who's taking a Latin class. I know he likes you."

I averted our eyes by observing a clump of snow that seemed set on sticking to the toe of our left shoe. "Why does everyone think that?"

She raised an eyebrow. "Does 'everyone' include you?"

I grumbled incoherently and made no reply. Erik responded for me: "_Her opinion on that subject varies from time to time, depending on what kind of mood she finds herself in and what Monsieur White is wearing on the day in question_."

"Good luck with that," she replied, smirking and turned in the direction of her own house as we approached mine.

"Hey," I called her back, "do you want to come over?"

She turned and walked backwards in order to address us and continue towards the direction of her own escape from the cold at the same time and said, "Thanks, but no thanks. My dad's out of town and I'm determined that as much of his stuff as possible should disappear before he gets back!" She turned around again and made her snow paved way back to her parents' house.

'I think Evony's right about the Joe thing at least. He's nice, but Raoul's just too Raoulish,' I thought when we could no longer see her. 'Feel free to keep reeling Christine in though. As long as whatever you do doesn't involve violence or things the fourteen-year-old mind shouldn't be comprehending.'

He flitted through some very depressing thoughts about how it was pointless and she could never love him anyway, nor could anyone else for various reasons that were also depressing. I interrupted these thoughts with one of my own: 'Just stop. You're so depressing all the time and I bet you didn't even look that bad. Anyway, it doesn't matter at this point because right now, your face is my face, so if you keep thinking bad stuff about yourself, I'm going to start taking it personally! You think my threats are empty, but whether you do or do not believe it, I'm capable of getting Highschool Musical songs stuck in our head at any given time!'

The most awkward silence I have, to this day, ever experienced. And that's saying a lot.

After about a million hours, he asked, '_Why should it concern you?_'

'Well, usually, the only time you're not depressed is when you're angry. Most of the time at me. So I decided to get mad at you so you would get mad at me, as a sort of twisted way of cheering you up. Except it didn't work 'cause you're not mad at me and you're still depressed...'

After contemplating the situation for a moment or two, Erik came to the unchangeable conclusion that I was, in all fact, insane. He started rifling through the thoughts shoved unceremoniously to the back of my mind, trying to locate when exactly it had been during my infancy, that I had been dropped on my head. I let him wander around a daydream about what would happen if Indiana Jones met Harry Potter and the joke about the prospector from Texas before going 'Hey, stay out of that one, it's personal!' when he came to close to a Joe vs. Sam debate. I didn't want anyone figuring out that at that moment, Sam was winning.

Erik decided that I was possibly not crazy, but extremely and remarkably naive. '_Anyhow, you __are__ only an adolescent._'

'I thought we established back in Chapter Three that I'm not an adolescent.'

'_No. It was established that, while you indeed were an adolescent, you were unable to accept it as a fact._'

'Whatever. So one day the prospector from Texas is looking around for something to prospect...'

**Summer: Not my best work, but please review anyway, just to let me know I still exist to the world of FFN!**

**Erik: Flame and-**

**Summer: Just flame, I don't even care.**


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